Reset Code: Alfheim
by Silius1
Summary: After three long years of fighting to escape the VRMMORPG: Sword Art Online, all of the players have finally left. However, 300 people have been imprisoned in a different VRMMORPG: Alfheim Online. In addition, the vitals of those remaining people are beginning to weaken so time is running out. Will these people escape this VRMMO? Or will they perish? This is Code Alfheim's redo.
1. Chapter 1: A New Beginning

_Disclaimer: I don't own anything apart from the words that I write and the characters that I create. Credit goes to the original creator of the SAO universe; credits also to the creators and contributors to the Code Lyoko series and related works._

* * *

Aincrad Standard Time: [18:30] June 1st, 2025

Location: [Floor 98: Iwaya]

The game of SAO was cleared after nearly 3 years of fighting in Aincrad. Everyone cheered and enjoyed their last day in Aincrad, however the hidden truth behind one of the stronger clearers kept him and his friends from truly enjoying it. The clearer known as Hikaru Murai or Ulrich Stern and his friends have gone to the newest house owned by the entirety of the Senryaku unit in Iwaya on floor 98, which is the size of a giant mansion and the only reason Hikaru has it is because everyone in the Senryaku unit pooled their money together and became co-owners because of its immense price of nearly 100 million Col, to enjoy their final days in Aincrad. The people who have assembled in Hikaru's mansion are: Hikaru, Sylvia, Karen, Katsuo, Kana, Kazuto, Asuna, Tsuboi (Klein), Keiko, Rika, Haruka, Mamoru, and Yui.

"I-I can't believe it, after three years, Aincrad has been cleared and we can all leave" Kazuto says, doubting himself somewhat out of the happiness of freedom after three years.

"Not all of us Kirito-kun." Asuna says sadly, glancing at Hikaru, knowing that he exists in Aincrad, body and soul, unlike everyone else who is here only in their minds figuratively.

"Oh, I'm sorry Hikaru, I forgot." Kazuto says in a sad tone, having forgotten his unique circumstances.

"It's alright, atleast you all can leave, your friends and families must be worried sick, the sooner you all can return, the better." Hikaru says, trying to sound happy over how his friends can reunite with their friends and families.

"Hikaru, you're part of our family too, even though we'd return to our own world, you'd be left behind" Karen says sadly.

"Karen's right Hikaru, you're part of our extended family, it's never good being forced to leave family behind." Keiko says, with Sylvia, Haruka, and Rika nodding in agreement.

"They're right about all this. After all this time we spent together in Aincrad, I consider you, Kazuto, Tsuboi, and Mamoru as my brothers. I also think of Keiko and the other girls as my sisters." Katsuo says proudly.

"Yeah Hikaru, never assume you're alone, you're part of our family, even if we're not blood related." Tsuboi says with his usual attitude, giving a thumbs up during his speech.

"You guys...you're so silly." Hikaru says desperately trying to hold back his tears.

* * *

Everyone in the group begins laughing trying to ease the tense situation, which succeeds rather easily. When things calm down between the group, Hikaru decides to ask a question of his friends since they'll be leaving him relatively soon and he might not be able to see them again. He at least wants to know their plans for the future after this.

"Anyway, what are you all going to after this?" Hikaru asks the group.

"I'll have a lot of education to catch up on, I'm sure being stuck here for 3 years really reduced my actual intelligence." Karen says casually, being a bit depressed near the end, remembering that three years passed in real life and a lot of things could've easily happened outside Aincrad.

"I'll need to talk with my sister and mother, they're surely both worried sick and mad at me." Kazuto says with mixed tones, praying things will end civil between himself, his sister, and his mother.

"I don't know actually, SAO was my purpose for the last three years. I don't know what I'll do after I'm done here, I'm definitely going to keep playing MMORPGs though, it's very fun." Katsuo says, having enjoyed 'playing' this MMO and wants to play more of them.

"I do miss my younger brother and sister, I've been raising him with help with my sister after my parents passed away. I hope the both of them are doing fine. I never anticipated that I'd be stuck here for three years. Originally, this was just going to be a fun activity to pass time, but not THIS much time." Sylvia says, with a hint of guilt, remembering her family on the other side.

The rest of the group answer in similar ways, with Hikaru being made mildly jealous with each response because of how he's trapped in this virtual reality world.

"Hikaru, why did you ask us this? Is there a reason?" Karen asks out of curiosity.

"I wanted to know, it helps me relax a little knowing what you're going to do with this time of conflict ending." Hikaru says calmly.

"I see, I suppose knowing the plans of your friends can bring one a little stability." Mamoru interjects calmly, knowing the logic behind his intent.

"I want a way to meet up with you all in the real world actually, is there a place all of us can meet up in?" Kana says with a little optimism and sadness.

"Doesn't Andrew run a bar in real life? We could meet up there." Asuna mentions calmly, hoping that things work out in this manner.

"Hikaru, I may know a way you can attend as well. Considering how you entered Aincrad through unorthodox methods, I imagine Cardinal would've digitized you. If I can find an admin console, I think could turn your existence into an item and transfer you to my NerveGear, in a way, you'd become a pseudo Artificial Intelligence." Kazuto says, praying that this works as he thinks.

"That sounds depressing, I'm not sure how much I'd like that." Hikaru says in an obviously depressed tone.

"Don't take it that way Hikaru, your mind and body would still stay here, but you'd have access to us digitally, we'd be able to meet in the real world." Kazuto says, trying to cheer up Hikaru.

"If you put it that way, it does sound a little better." Hikaru says sheepishly.

"I imagine you all must be hungry; Asuna, Kana, Haruka, would you all mind helping me with cooking up a feast?" Karen asks, since these four are the best chefs in this group of friends.

"Certainly, Kirito-kun, keep out of trouble." Asuna says seriously, with Kana and Haruka nodding in approval for cooking the feast and leaving to the kitchen, leaving Hikaru, Kirito, Katsuo, Sylvia, Klein, Rika, Keiko, and Yui.

"I don't plan on waiting here until the food's ready. Hikaru, you said this place has a forge right?" Rika asks.

"Yeah, it's a floor above us, far right." Hikaru says relatively nonchalantly, knowing Rika's favoritism of forging.

Rika departs to the forge, not wanting to be stuck in a room full of guys, aside from Sylvia, Keiko, and Yui.

"I'm going to head to the library; Keiko, Yui, Mamoru, do you three want to come with me?" Sylvia says, wanting to read up on various topics.

"Fine by me. Normally I'd be drinking a little, but what the heck." Mamoru says in a light hearted manner.

"Certainly, bye bye Papa." Yui says while running towards Kazuto and giving him a quick hug, then departs with Sylvia, Keiko, and Mamoru to the library.

"This leaves you, Katsuo, Klein, and myself; Hey, do you all want to spar in the ring? It has a unique ability of creating any environment." Hikaru asks what's left of the group.

"Normally, I'd say yes, but I'll pass. Have fun." Klein shrugs, laying back against a couch.

"Are you sure? What about the rule of death?" Kazuto asks in mild shock.

"Remember when Kayaba told us that he disabled the rule of death?. How do you think we've survived since XANA showed up?" Hikaru says, surprised that Kazuto forgot this common information.

"Count me in, I've been crazy bored since we beat Heathcliff." Katsuo says with fire in his tone, wanting to get one fight in between this group to see who would be the victor.

"Very well...what setting will we use? Total loss? Half Loss? First Strike?" Kazuto asks.

"First strike is unfair because of the fact you and Hikaru are much faster than us." Katsuo says, knowing that he's not as fast as Kazuto and Hikaru.

"Let's do Half loss, it'll allow us to go all out and avoid dying in battle." Kazuto says, hoping to make a compromise with the group.

"Fair enough, let's head to the ring, I have a special environment in mind." Hikaru says with giddiness in his tone, while heading to the ring with Kazuto and Katsuo.

* * *

The group wander through the large hallways of Senryaku's mansion to reach the dueling ring near the top of the mansion to start the duel between Hikaru, Katsuo, and Kazuto. They arrive at the ring and when they enter, a special field is created and the environment changes to a giant ice mountain field, that is reminiscent of floor 58's mountains. The four challengers are in random parts of the environment, thus it's become a sort of race to take down the others and come out victorious.

"Hmm; a mountainous terrain, I'm glad I have this pure white shield, I can hide myself near the snow and pick them off one by one, but if this place is giant-sized, the match would never end. As much as I would want to stay alive, I'm not going to use stealth and fight them face to face. You are so going down Hikaru." Katsuo says quietly, not trying to alert the others if they're close by, and trying to avoid causing an avalanche.

Katsuo then decides to draw his dual blades and runs north to try catching at least one of the others.

"This environment reminds me of floor 58, I remember that my Dark Repulser was made by Rika from a crystalline ingot I got from that dragon." Kazuto says quietly, wondering how to make this environment work for him.

Kazuto decides to head towards the mountainside to get an aerial view of the area and find the others.

"Looks like things are going well, I bet that Kazuto and Katsuo are dumbfounded and I can use that chance to get a drop on the others...but who should I go after first? Kazuto is very skilled with dual blades so he'll be trouble, but Katsuo is incredibly resilient so if I go after him, I'll be too weak to fight Kazuto. But I'll have the same problems vice-versa." Hikaru is pondering who to go after first.

* * *

Hikaru departs to get a drop on either Kazuto or Katsuo, as Kazuto is known as the Black Swordsman and Katsuo's known as the adaptable White Fortress. When Heathcliff was defeated, they were the most powerful of all the clearers, with Hikaru tying for first alongside Kazuto and Katsuo because of his increased strength but with his capability to become exhausted making him relatively fragile. Sylvia herself is widely considered by the clearers strong enough to take down any of these three but Sylvia has never desired to fight against the trio so they'll never know if this is true or not.

Hikaru and Katsuo are dashing through the mountainous terrain trying to find their opponents, with Kazuto taking the different approach of climbing the mountainside to find the others. Hikaru quickly sees the silhouette of one of the challengers and uses his super-sprint skill to quickly sneak up on the person. To his surprise, the silhouette is Kazuto's.

"Excellent, my most difficult opponent is here unaware of my presence, Katsuo is not as strong as Kazuto generally, so removing Kirito from the duel will be a definite plus." Hikaru says to himself, using a special version of the dual blades unique skill that he received from Cardinal when Kayaba reprogrammed it and draws his Kingetsuga &amp; Kurogetsuga, the one katana that Rika made with the unique quality of changing color &amp; name separated into three different katanas upon the acquisition of the dual blades skill, and creeps behind Kazuto to begin the attack.

Right when Hikaru would begin the attack, Kazuto draws his Elucidator and Dark Repulser and blocks the attack

"Did you honestly think you'd be able to eliminate me that easily Hikaru?" Kazuto says with pride, trying to hide how he's having a degree of trouble keeping Hikaru back.

"Not really, but I figured I'd eliminate you here and now and deal with Katsuo later." Hikaru says with the same amount of pride.

"Then let me fight you with everything I've got Hikaru, I will not lose to you." Kazuto says proudly.

"Same to you, we both use dual weaponry, so we'll need to see who comes out victorious amongst us." Hikaru says, before beginning the clash.

* * *

Hikaru and Kazuto fight with their dual bladed weaponry for over 15 minutes and neither side seems to hold an advantage. They are beginning to make mistakes because of exhaustion, which Katsuo takes advantage of, because he was taking cover out of sight during their fight, wanting to fight the two in a weakened state because of how tough it'd be to fight them at full strength.

"This is my perfect chance to defeat you both, prepare to be defeated!" Katsuo exclaims, before rushing to attack them.

Kazuto and Hikaru break away from their fight to keep Katsuo from taking victory because of how they're both rather weak. Right when they were going to inflict their final attacks, a voice is heard from outside the ring

"Kirito-kun, everyone, get out of that arena! We finished cooking ten minutes ago and we've been trying to find you!" Asuna says very angrily.

"Uh-oh, Asuna is very scary when she's mad...we ought to leave now and try to keep that anger minimal." Kazuto gulps in a very scared tone, having seen Asuna's anger more than once.

"Agreed." Hikaru and Katsuo say in the same scared tone, knowing how Asuna gets when she's mad.

* * *

They exit the arena to find Asuna, Kana, and Karen in the room, looking very annoyed. Hikaru and the others get shivers down their spines upon seeing those angry faces, they then head down to the dining hall to eat the meal that was prepared.

After they finish eating, they start up new conversation that last a few hours. They all notice it's gotten relatively late, with Kazuto, Asuna, Yui, Haruka, Mamoru, and Tsuboi departing to their own homes to sleep one last time in Aincrad before leaving Aincrad tomorrow, as they are among the last few hundred people departing this game. Sylvia, Karen, Katsuo, and Kana reside in the estate with Hikaru as these four are the closest friends Hikaru has in the entire world of Aincrad.

"I guess this is our last full day in Aincrad, we've agreed to all log out tomorrow at noon." Katsuo says with relative sadness.

"Well, if what Kazuto said is true, I've become integrated with Cardinal's code, so I should be able to be with you outside of Aincrad to a limited extent." Hikaru says.

"I thought that thought made you depressed Hikaru?" Karen asks, wondering why Hikaru suddenly seems interested to do this.

"Knowing that you all are leaving kind of pushes me to do extreme things to make sure we all stay together." Hikaru says with a little doubt in his tone.

"We'll definitely have to meet up with Kazuto and Yui, I'm pretty sure that Heathcliff told Kazuto the admin code to this game when he spoke with him privately, so we can use it to properly digitize you Hikaru." Karen says.

"Guys, let's continue this discussion tomorrow, we need rest." Katsuo says.

The group nods in approval and head out to their bedrooms to sleep for the night. The next morning, there's a light knock on Hikaru's door that he wouldn't even hear without his strong natural listening skill.

* * *

Aincrad Standard Time: [8:00] June 2nd, 2025

"Who is it?" Hikaru asks half asleep, wearing a new sleeping outfit he purchased on floor 80: a robe colored gold and brown.

"It's me, Karen, Katsuo and the others left already, we're meeting in Floor One's hidden dungeon, underneath the Black Iron Castle. Would you mind if I came in?" Karen asks softly.

"Uh sure, come on in." Hikaru says.

Karen enters the room wearing a robe herself, the design is similar to Hikaru's, but the colors are different with a purple color with red trims.

"Karen, when did you start wearing that?" Hikaru asks in utter shock.

"Keiko made it for me a few days ago, I like the colors of this outfit believe it or not. Anyway...do you like it?" Karen says in a casual tone, hiding a mild blush.

"Y-Yeah...it's nice." Hikaru says nervously, he's trying to avoid making her mad.

"I see." Karen says trying to hide her blush.

"Well; I suppose we should go, we don't want to keep the others waiting." Hikaru says.

"Right, let's go." Karen says with a nod.

Karen and Hikaru depart to floor 1's City of Beginning and walk to the Black Iron Castle where they find Katsuo, Sylvia, Kana, Mamoru, Haruka, Kazuto, Asuna, and Yui outside the dungeon entrance, with all of the people wearing their newest armors, aside from Yui who's wearing the same white dress.

* * *

Aincrad Standard Time: [10:00] June 2nd, 2025

"Good, everyone's here. We can go to the admin console that exists in this dungeon to solve this problem of yours Hikaru." Kazuto says, beckoning everyone to follow his lead.

The group journey through the abandoned dungeon to find the safe room and reactivate the admin console to begin digitizing Hikaru's code to Kazuto's NerveGear.

"Wow, this dungeon was among one of the most dangerous in Aincrad and now it's outright empty." Hikaru says in mild shock.

"Yeah, all monsters and NPCs were deactivated to prepare for the dismantling of Sword Art Online two hours from now." Kazuto says calmly. "I'm going to begin the procedure, are you ready Hikaru?" Kazuto asks.

"Yeah, I presume I'll be asleep while I'm in your NerveGear, so I'll see you all when I'm summoned." Hikaru says.

Kazuto starts the procedure to begin the digitization of Hikaru's character data to his NerveGear, so he'll be reborn as an Artificial Intelligence like Yui. Things appear to be going smoothly until problems begin occurring

"Kazuto...I feel odd...is this supposed to happen?" Hikaru asks in confusion.

"What sensation do you have?" Kazuto asks, trying to figure out the specifics.

"It feels like a...transporting sensation." Hikaru says, with this sensation overriding his senses.

"Transporting… That's not supposed to happen!" Kazuto exclaims in a panicked tone, working the controls to figure out what's happening.

Hikaru quickly begins to dissipate pixel by pixel, first starting with his legs

"Wha-What's happening?!" Hikaru asks in shock, with his body still disappearing.

"I-I don't know!" Kazuto says freaking out, trying to figure out what's happening and the group all gasp in horror at what they're seeing.

The dissipation continues rapidly with only Hikaru's arms and everything above the upper torso remaining

"Hikaru, just stay calm! if I'm right, you're just being transferred to a different version of Cardinal, what that means is that you'll be sent to another VRMMORPG. When we log out, we will do our best to find you." Kazuto says trying to calm himself and Hikaru down.

The devirtualization is at the phase where Hikaru's head is left, who is smiling lightly and nods before he vanishes.

"What? Where'd he go?!" Karen shouts in surprise.

"I don't know Karen. But don't worry, we'll find him." Katsuo says, trying to calm down Karen.

"Come on, let's get out of Aincrad, return to reality and we'll search for Hikaru then." Sylvia says in a calm tone, with her and the others logging out of Sword Art Online with them hoping to find Hikaru soon.

* * *

Unfortunately, things will not be going so smoothly for this group of players as they will not be returning to reality as soon as they hope.


	2. Chapter 2: Kazuto's Arrival

_Disclaimer: I don't own anything apart from the words that I write and the characters that I create. Credit goes to the original creator of the SAO universe; credits also to the creators and contributors to the Code Lyoko series and related works._

Author Notes: If you want to understand this story fully, I would highly recommend reading my previous work: Reset Code Aincrad.

Please read and review since I'm not working with a beta this time around and until I get something back to the ones I asked, I probably won't be using one.

* * *

Real Life Standard Time: [13:00] July 31th, 2025

It's been around two months since the trapped players escaped Sword Art Online, but there's still around three hundred people trapped in virtual reality. Kazuto was lucky enough to make it back to reality, but the three hundred people were not so lucky as they're still comatose in the hospital, with their minds still trapped somewhere in the virtual world. Not long after he finished his physical rehabilitation, Andrew asked Kazuto to stop by his place of business: the Dicey Cafe as he claims that he has something he'd want to see, immediately. When Kazuto enters the Cafe, Andrew beckons him to sit down at one of the bar stools, which he does straightaway.

"Andrew, do you know how Asuna and the others are faring?" Kazuto asks in concern, as he hasn't been able to visit the others but he knew that they were still trapped when he escaped Aincrad.

"They're…they're not doing well. Their vitals are beginning to drop and the doctors are reaching their limits. It's been three years and they've been dependent on life support which is beginning to fail." Andrew admits sadly, not wanting to have told Kazuto this so bluntly, but there wasn't much choice, since this is the truth and it is a big problem for those remaining three hundred.

"Y-You must be kidding! Asuna, Karen, Katsuo, Sylvia, and so many others are still stuck somewhere! Are you telling me...telling me that...if they aren't freed soon...?" Kazuto asks in a panic, not wanting any of his friends from Aincrad to die in this way.

"The doctors are doing everything they can, but they aren't miracle workers. The people have been comatose three years from Sword Art Online dependent on life support, and at the most, they have one more month before their vitals fail entirely." Andrew calmly tries to explain the situation and try calming down the panicking Kazuto "The minds of the three hundred players need to be made active for them to survive past this month. Anyway, speaking of Asuna, that's partly while I called for you. Here." Andrew continues with a frown, lightly passing a game case across the bar table, with Kazuto quickly catching it.

"Alfheim? What is this Andrew?" Kazuto asks, glancing at the case's front and back.

"It's another Virtual Reality MMO. From what I know, it's like Sword Art Online with no sword skills and magic. Anyway, there's a reason why I'm showing you this." Andrew states calmly, before pulling him a picture from his shirt pocket and showing it to Kazuto.

Kazuto looks at the picture for a moment and gasps when he recognizes the person in the picture: Asuna Yuuki, Kazuto's wife in the game Sword Art Online.

"W-Where did you get this Andrew?" Kazuto demands, trying to keep a calm disposition.

"Some players in Alfheim took this picture." Andrew then lightly flips the game case to its back and points to a tree in the middle "It was taken here, at a place called: The World Tree."

"If Asuna is there in Alfheim…" Kazuto mumbles quietly, perhaps realizing what's going on.

"There's no definite proof, but Asuna is still trapped in Virtual Reality and if she's there in Alfheim, it's very likely that the rest of the Aincrad players are there."

"Well then; I should get to work on finding everyone. You mind if I take this?"

"Go ahead. If it helps free everyone, you have my blessings. Go free everyone then we can have a proper reunion in reality. Best of luck." Andrew says with a smile, exchanging a friendly fist bump with Kazuto before he leaves the cafe.

"I'd better get to work. I only have a month before Asuna and the others...no, I _won't_ let that happen. I _will_ free everyone that's still trapped. Asuna...everyone, I'm coming to save you. But…this may actually be too big a job for myself alone. Just about everyone I would ask is still trapped in virtual reality…wait, Tsuboi and Rika made it out, maybe I could ask for their help."

* * *

Real Life Standard Time: [15:00] July 31th, 2025

Kazuto contacted Tsuboi and Rika, asking them to meet at a small park not far from his house, with Tsuboi being the last one to show up

"Good to see you in reality Kazuto." Tsuboi replies with a friendly salute as he walks into the park, seeing the black haired Kazuto Kirigaya and the brunette: Rika Shinozaki.

"Likewise Tsuboi, Rika. Anyway, I came to ask for your help with something." Kazuto replies with a brief smile, before getting straight to the point.

"Why do you need our help 'Black Swordsman'?" Rika teasingly asks, wondering why this powerful Aincrad player needs help.

"Rika, I'm asking for your help to help everyone stuck in the virtual world: Karen, Katsuo, Sylvia, Keiko, everyone. It's too much for me alone." Kazuto says, trying to get his point across rather seriously.

Rika's joking attitude fades as Kazuto explains himself and she plays with her fingers a little, trying to think of something to say "I see. Well, you make a convincing argument, but what exactly do you want us to do?"

"I want you two to join Alfheim Online with me and help me find the others." Kazuto bluntly says, telling them his plan.

"Sorry Kazuto but I can't help you this time." Tsuboi frowns as he tells Kazuto that he can't join in this time.

"Count me in, but the thing is, I'm going to do this solo." Rika lets out a small laugh as she talks.

"Why?" Kazuto is left shocked at how Rika wants to help but wants to do it alone.

"We'll be able to cover more ground separately. I actually created an account in Alfheim about a week ago as a Leprechaun character. I'll cover the northern territories: Puca, Leprechaun, Gnome, and Spriggan, and you can cover the southern territories: Cait Sith, Sylph, Salamander, and Imp."

"Okay, but where do we meet? We don't have that much time available and we need to work fast."

"I crossed over my Aincrad avatar which means that I'm as strong as I was in that MMO and all my money crossed over. I used that money to buy a house in a neutral city in Cait Sith territory. Gather as many people from Aincrad as you can and bring them there. I'll do the same."

"Will do. Best of luck." Kazuto smiles a little as he walks away, before glancing toward Rika "We have a time limit of a month. We need to find whatever's keeping the others trapped and free them."

"Oh please, after what we've been through in Aincrad the last three years, this'll be a piece of cake." Rika laughs off the caution from Kazuto before calming down a little "Let's bring our friends back home, where they should be." Rika says with a serious smile, walking past Kazuto and heads home to get back in Alfheim.

"Right. Let's do this Rika. Best of luck Tsuboi, if you change your mind, I'd appreciate it." Kazuto sincerely says to the red haired man who he met the day the ten thousand players were imprisoned in Aincrad.

"Will do. I may reconsider this but right now, I'm not sure I can join in." Tsuboi nods in response to Kazuto's statement.


	3. Interlude: Shout Out

This is a really random entry I know, but I feel like I need to give a shout out to a fellow fanfiction writer. If you're reading this, I am very thankful to Empty265.

If you're wondering why I'm giving this shout-out, it's for this reason: While I came up with this concept for the series myself, Empty helped inspire me to actually post this series and helped me come up with a small problem I had prior to me setting it up. Empty's sword art online crossover story: Nanoha x Sword Art Online: Concerto of Blades helped me come up with a solution on how to deal with the matter of Ulrich's unique skills from Lyoko. I don't know what exactly happened to make him/her delete the story and any others he/she may have had, but Empty...I owe you for helping me work up the desire to post this series.


	4. Chapter 3: Reunification Commence

Hikaru has vanished from his friends in the world of Aincrad and appeared in another VRMMORPG, will he be able to reunite with his friends?

_Disclaimer: I don't own anything apart from the words that I write and the characters that I create. Credit goes to the original creator of the SAO universe; credits also to the creators and contributors to the Code Lyoko series and related works._

Author Notes: If you want to understand this story fully, I would highly recommend reading my previous work: Code Aincrad. Also, while the first half is the same as the original story granted, but after the halfway mark, things REALLY change from the original. A few themes will stay the same, but this story will be drastically different from before.

Lastly, please read and review.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [10:30] August 1st, 2025

Hikaru suddenly vanished from the world of Aincrad because of a mistake in the conversion process to another VRMMORPG according to his friend: Kazuto. After two months of slow reconstruction and transferring in Cardinal's archives, Hikaru materializes in the sky roughly two hundred feet above a forest and rapidly begins to fall.

Ah damn damn damn! There's no way I'm going to survive this!" Hikaru shouts fearfully as he sees himself rapidly falling to the ground.

Hikaru is still quickly falling and will hit the ground in less than 20 seconds.

"If someone's there, please help me!" Hikaru shouts during the fall.

Right when Hikaru would've crashed to the ground, he gets saved by another player who appears to have wings on her back with the pair then landing down to the ground slowly with the process being rather calm and serene.

"Are you okay, whoever you are?" The player asks worriedly. Hikaru quickly notices that it's a female player clothed in green and white with long blonde hair.

"I am now, I'm glad you saved me..." Hikaru says out of gratitude, but slows down when he would address the person.

"My name is Leafa, what's yours?" Leafa asks in a polite manner, extending her right hand to Hikaru.

"I'm Ul-" Hikaru cut off, thinking he should use a different identity for the time being considering the lessons he learned back in Aincrad, with Leafa tilting her head in confusion. "I-I'm Ulkaios, I'm pleased to meet you Leafa." Hikaru says with a mild, near invisible stutter in his tone, trying to improvise on a name for himself, accepting the handshake. He is unaware of how this altered his avatar name from his real name to this makeshift disguise of Ulkaios.

"Same to you Ulkaios, are you new to Alfheim Online?" Leafa asks in a polite manner.

"_So this must be another VRMMORPG, just like Kazuto said._" Hikaru says to himself "Yeah, I'm new to Alfheim Online, but when I created this character, I spawned in mid-air about to crash, but you saved me from that fate." Hikaru says, looking sheepish.

"I see. It's actually rare for that to happen to players starting out, anyway, it's only right for me to help a fellow Sylph." Leafa says with a smile toward Hikaru.

"_So...I'm a Sylph in this world?_" Hikaru asks himself, trying to figure out what in the world's going on and glances around the forest he's in.

"Look, I don't want to rush you, but we really shouldn't stay here, the Salamanders tend to frequent this area. I actually saved a Spriggan in this area named Kirito yesterday. He's been staying with me for a little while." Leafa says.

"_Kirito?! Is it a coincidence? Is Kazuto in this world?_" Hikaru asks himself in shock. "Leafa...you said you saved a player named Kirito? Could you bring me to where he last was?" Hikaru says in a relatively pushy tone, wanting to make sure that this Kirito is the same person he knew from Aincrad.

"Uh...sure, I dropped him off in Sylvain, it's about a thirty minute flight from here." Leafa trailed off, looking mildly confused about why Hikaru wants to see this Kirito.

"Flight? What are you talking about Leafa?" Hikaru asks, utterly confused about the idea of anyone being able to fly.

"Oh yeah, you're new to this game. Essentially, there's a flight engine in this game that allows the players to fly, though it's not unlimited." Leafa explains, with a small shrug of her shoulders. "It'll take too long if we walk from here to Sylvain, we need to fly if we want to reach it quickly. Here, let me teach you how to use the flight engine." Leafa continues while walking around to Hikaru's back.

"Wh-what are you doing Leafa?" Hikaru asks slightly in fear as he sees Leafa walking to his back.

"Just calm down." Leafa tries to soothe him while walking to Hikaru's back, puts her hand on his back and applies some force.

"H-Hey! What gives?!" Hikaru says freaked out when Leafa started touching his back.

"Relax, what I'm doing is a good lesson for new players, anyway, try to imagine bones and muscle spreading out around here and try to move them." Leafa spoke in a surprisingly compassionate tone, also a tone of an instructor.

"_This reminds me of when Yui helped me back in Aincrad._" Hikaru says to himself, noting Leafa's desire to help him. "Uh, alright." Hikaru mutters a little awkwardly, focusing on what Leafa told him about.

Hikaru summons his dark green wings, following Leafa's instructions and manages to get them fully spread out and instinctively flies afterwards, with Leafa nearby, also in flight.

"You're pretty smart, far smarter than that Kirito, he couldn't even do this on his first try. It took me ten minutes to get him to do this. You've impressed me Ulkaios." She laughed as she recalled Kirito's spiraling flight as she flies up to Hikaru.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [11:00] August 1st, 2025

The pair flies to Sylvain, the Sylph capital and stop by the inn where Leafa dropped off Kirito. They arrive at the inn to find a player dressed in all black sitting on a small stool at a table.

"_Is that...Kazuto?_" Hikaru asks himself, trying to read the aura of the player whose signature clearly is black.

"Hello Kirito-kun, I see you've logged back in." Leafa says with a friendly tone to the Spriggan player.

"Ah, Leafa, good to see you, who's your friend?" Kirito asks and after Hikaru heard his voice, he quietly gasped, recognizing Kazuto's voice.

"This is Ulkaios, he's a new player of Alfheim Online. I saved him in the same general area we met yesterday."

"I'm pleased to meet you Ulkaios." Kazuto says, apparently not realizing that Hikaru is Ulkaios, since Hikaru noticed that his appearance is nearly identical from Aincrad aside from all of the green color and the new outfit.

Hikaru can't stand the thought of Kazuto being unaware of the fact his friend is literally in the same room, so he decides to take steps to prevent this from getting out of hand.

"Leafa, do you think I can talk to Kirito alone for a minute?" Hikaru requested with a mildly solemn tone.

"Sure, I'll wait outside for you both." Leafa says before departing the inn.

Hikaru looks around to see if there's any other players around before he reveals his identity as Ulrich Stern, or Hikaru Murai as most people called him.

"What did you need to talk to me about Ulkaios?" Kazuto asks.

"Kazuto, it's me! Hikaru! You know, from Aincrad!" Hikaru hissed just above the level of a general conversation, but not quite shouting.

"Wait...Hikaru?! What are you doing here in Alfheim? I saw you vanish in Aincrad nearly two months ago!" Kazuto exclaimed, clearly shocked since he saw Hikaru vanish back in Aincrad. Kazuto and the others had no idea what truly happened to him after that event. "_Has he been here in Alfheim since the teleport?_" Kazuto asks himself curiously.

"It's been two months? Wow, so I've lost two months' worth of time… Anyway, what happened to Karen and the others?" Hikaru asks, with his mood dropping a little as he hears that he's lost two months of time, and wonders what's happened to his friends during the two months.

"We haven't had a chance to meet up yet, I've been undergoing physical therapy since I left Aincrad. However a good number of SAO players haven't returned to reality actually." Kazuto informed him quietly. "_Okay, he definitely hasn't been here long if he said that. But...geez, I cannot understand why he is unaware two months have passed. Why does he not know this?!_" Kazuto continues in his mind, with his confusion about Hikaru only rising.

"Who hasn't returned?" Hikaru asks, feeling concerned for his friends from Sword Art Online.

"About three hundred people, including Asuna, Karen, Kana, Katsuo, Sylvia, Haruka, and Mamoru, have not returned to reality. Agil showed me a picture of Asuna being in this game. If Asuna's here, I suspect the others are here as well." Kazuto says, revealing his suspicions.

"Have they been able to get together to try figuring out what happened?"

"I have no idea, I just started playing this MMO yesterday after I heard Asuna was here."

"I see, we should get going, before Leafa gets mad at us, anyway for now, do you think you could call me Ulkaios? I'll call you Kirito in public."

"Certainly...Ulkaios..." Kazuto muttered with a little difficulty, finding it uneasy to call one of his close friends by this new name.

Kazuto and Hikaru then leave the inn to find Leafa waiting for them.

"Kirito-kun, you said you wanted me to bring you to Aarun?" Leafa asks.

"Yeah, I have a friend near there, I need to get there." Kazuto says quietly, with his thoughts being near singular about Asuna and the others now.

"I actually have friends of my own in this game, I want to try finding them if possible." Hikaru points out, wanting to find out what happened to the Senryaku unit and the Aincrad players in his two month absence.

"Do you know what their names are? Or what race they're in?" Leafa asked.

"Not particularly." Hikaru trailed off sadly, with his lack of knowledge being a huge hindrance here.

"That's going to make things difficult, I think there are at least 500,000 players in this game minimal." Leafa says with a small sigh, trying not to shatter Hikaru's hope. "Come on, let's go. We need to get you all some weapons for the upcoming treks."

* * *

The trio then depart to the markets since Kazuto has asked to buy new weaponry, and Hikaru is hoping to check out their inventory of katanas. Kazuto buys a large 'Black Iron Great Sword', while Hikaru buys a katana with the name: Arondite. Hikaru bought this new katana since he doesn't have any of the items or equipment from Aincrad since he got a system notice about how his inventory was utterly scrapped while he was falling to the ground; but he does have around 800,000 Yuld, which he guesses may have been converted from all of the Col that he had in Aincrad.

Around this moment, a female player nearby dressed in primarily purple and red, who looks rather similar to Karen, walks by the stall, which Kazuto and Hikaru notice right away. She slows down slightly when she arrives near the weapon stall, apparently looking for wares herself

"_Damn it Okamoto… I was counting on you to help me out here! And you tell me 'I'm going to Lugru, find me there later.' You are…geez._" The girl mumbles under her breath rather angrily.

"Excuse me, have we met before?" Hikaru asks the girl, wondering if this girl merely looks like Karen or is actually her.

"Hm? Are you speaking to me?" The girl asks absentmindedly not really paying attention to the person talking, until she realizes that he is indeed talking to her. "Oh, I'm sorry, I've been a little pre-occupied, I'm trying to find some friends of mine scattered all over. Though, I have no idea if they're even here or not." The girl says, still not quite paying full attention to the player talking to her.

"I see." Hikaru says calmly, still glancing at the girl.

"I'm also looking for a...very good friend of mine as well, but I have my doubts he's in this world to be honest." she trailed off, blushing slightly.

"Really, what are their game names? If you don't know the ones here in this world, what about the ones you remember?" Hikaru asks calmly, in a tone suggesting that he seemingly knows this person now.

"Normally, I'd be hesitant to say, but with game names, I'm looking for players who went by Masaru, Amaterasu, Elena, Mikuya, Pulse, and a few others." The girl trailed off, her blush having faded while she had been talking.

Kazuto muffled his gasp as he recognizes the voice of this character now, alongside the fact she knew Katsuo, Kana, Sylvia, Haruka, and Mamoru. This girl really is Solaris, or as she was commonly called by her close friends: Karen. Leafa then walks toward Hikaru.

"What's wrong with you guys? Is it that rare talking to someone from the Imp race?" Leafa asks with a mild sigh at the bewildered expressions from Hikaru and Kazuto. "Ulkaios, I'll trust you to keep Kirito-kun safe; bring him to the tower when you finish this conversation." Leafa leaves the area to get to the tower.

"Wait...Kirito...?" The girl sounded utterly surprised when Leafa said the name: Kirito.

"I'm glad to see you again, Karen Koizumi." Hikaru whispered loud enough for her to hear him.

The girl gasps in surprise. Understandable considering how someone knew her real name.

"How-How do you know my name?" Karen tries to talk calmly, in an attempt to disguise her fear.

"My name is Ulkaios in this world, but you know me as Hikaru Murai." Hikaru states rather proudly.

Karen gasps even louder, she presumed Hikaru was no longer even alive after the incident in Aincrad.

"Hikaru...? Is that really you?" Karen was not able to believe herself in the slightest, subconsciously hugging Hikaru.

"It's me alright, I'm glad I got to see you again Karen." Hikaru says with a tear in his eye, hugging Karen back.

"If you wouldn't mind, I'd prefer going by our in game names, that is, until we find the others." Karen says seriously, letting go of the hug before saying this.

"Okay then, my in game name is Ulkaios, Kazuto is still using the name Kirito, and what's yours?"

"I named this character Ashikaga, which overwrote my old name of Solaris." Karen says.

"Alright, Ulkaios, Ashikaga, we should get going, before Leafa gets angry at us." Kazuto says seriously.

"Right, let's get going." Karen says with a quick nod.

* * *

Hikaru, Karen, and Kazuto depart to the tower where Leafa is waiting for them. While the trio is walking towards the tower, they get a lot of negative stares from other Sylph players.

"_Kirito, can you think of a reason why these Sylphs seem to hate us?_" Karen whispers to the Spriggan.

"_No clue, though Leafa did mention that I wouldn't be welcome here much, maybe they don't like other races here._" Kazuto whispers back.

"_It could be why Leafa told me to keep you safe. Perhaps they tolerate you guys since I'm walking with you guys._" Hikaru interjected quietly, trying to avoid having the other Sylphs hear his statement.

"_Right. You are a Sylph so I imagine they wouldn't attack anyone traveling with one of their own. We'd better stay close to you Hikaru, we don't want to cause needless complications._" Karen nods, seeing the logic in what Hikaru said there.

They arrive at the tower after ten minutes of walking, with Karen being the guide, which is embarrassing slightly for Hikaru since he was supposed to be the one guiding them as he was a Sylph. They then enter the tower to find Leafa arguing with a small group of Sylphs.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [13:00] August 1st, 2025

"Leafa, do you think you could leave our party and think there'd be no consequences?" The leader of the group demanded angrily.

"You told me that I could join when I had the time Sigurd, and that I could leave whenever I wished!" Leafa replied angrily about how Sigurd is trying to force Leafa to stay.

"You're one of the most famous players in our party. If you leave suddenly with no reason, you'll damage my reputation." Sigurd retorts with the same degree of anger as before, with a strong mix of egotism as he speaks of 'his reputation'.

"_Hikaru, we need to help her._" Karen whispers worriedly, hearing what Sigurd is saying.

"_You're right Karen...wait, what is Kazuto doing?_" Hikaru whispers back, before noticing Kazuto walk off toward Leafa and the others.

Meanwhile, Kazuto merely walks towards Sigurd.

"Party members are not items." Kazuto says in his usual calm tone.

"What did you say Spriggan?" Sigurd demands with a angry scowl.

"You can't keep players in you party all the time, as if they were your equipment." Kazuto says with the same tone.

"You dare lecture me you damn Spriggan?!" Sigurd was getting angrier; his hand had strayed to his sword, in preparation to draw it.

"_Hikaru, we can't stand around now, Kazuto may need our help._" Karen whispers in a serious tone.

"_Yeah, let's go._" Hikaru whispers back.

The pair was on their way towards the group when Sigurd started talking again.

"You clearly must be a renegade player who got kicked out of his own territory!" Sigurd exclaims with a rage befitting a Salamander player.

"Don't be mean Sigurd, I'm partying with Kirito-kun now." Leafa retorts straight back to him.

"Leafa, whoever you are" Sigurd growls angrily, jabbing a finger at Hikaru at the second half of his remark "Do you plan on abandoning the Sylphs and becoming a renegade like this Spriggan?" Sigurd demands with minor confusion at the arrival of a new Sylph, but still his anger burned.

Leafa looks slightly flabbergasted, but regains her composure very quickly.

"Yeah, I'm leaving Sylvain." Leafa resolves angrily.

"I have no loyalty to the Sylphs, so I have no problem leaving either, and my name is Ulkaios." Hikaru snapped angrily, he's pissed that this...Sigurd is harassing Leafa and Kazuto.

"Count me in too Leafa." Karen says.

"Ulkaios, whoever you are, you're coming with me?" Leafa asks in shock.

"My name is Ashikaga, and yeah, I am." Karen states.

Sigurd gets even angrier and draws his sword pointing it at Kazuto, with Hikaru and Karen drawing their weapons as well.

"_Don't even think about it._" Karen snarls very angrily, having no problem fighting other players if they're harassing her friends.

"As long as you were just going to fly around aimlessly, I wouldn't have bothered to deal with this. However, since you aim to be a thief, I have no choice but to deal with you. Since you're here in Sylph territory, you have no issues with dying, right Spriggan?" Sigurd demanded.

Kazuto looks shocked for half a second then merely sighs, probably because Sigurd does not scare him at all after everything he's experienced in Aincrad. Almost immediately, one of Sigurd's colleagues speaks out.

"This isn't the time Sigurd, if you kill someone who isn't even able to fight back in front of everyone."

Sigurd gasps in shock and looks around to the surrounding Sylphs in the tower staring at him. He reluctantly sheathes his weapon, with Karen and Hikaru doing the same, and says "Once you leave Sylvain, you had better run and hide Leafa. If you betray me, you'll regret it immediately." Sigurd states in a cold tone before departing with his group.

"Leafa, are you sure about abandoning your territory? I don't want you throwing everything away for me." Kirito says with relative sadness.

* * *

Leafa is quiet and merely pushes Kazuto towards the center elevator, and motions Hikaru and Karen to follow. When they exit the elevator, they find themselves on the top of the tower, which offers an incredible view of the surrounding fields.

"This view is incredible." Kazuto and Karen say at the same time.

"I know right, whenever I come up here and gaze at the sky, it makes everything else feel so tiny in comparison." Leafa says while reaching out to the sky with her right arm. "This was a good chance for me actually. I've been wanting to leave Sylvain for a while now."

"But, I feel like I forced you to leave on a bad note." Kazuto seemed sad about this.

Karen and Hikaru glance at Kirito, surprised that Kazuto is being so compassionate towards Leafa.

"I couldn't think of any other way I could leave Sylvain, Kirito-kun." Leafa states, absolutely nonchalant at leaving.

"Hey, Leafa, Ashikaga, do either of you know what a 'renegade' is?" Kazuto asks curiously, wondering what the term means after hearing Sigurd calling him one.

"A renegade is a player who abandons their territory. They're greatly hated by other players." Karen looked down sadly; she herself is considered a renegade.

"Leafa, are you sure about this? You're going to rather long lengths for someone you just recently met." Kazuto says in surprise, hearing the explanation from Karen.

"Yeah, but I don't know why players dislike renegades so much, even if they're renegade, they're still a part of their nation." Leafa still sounded as though she didn't care.

There's a little silence before a voice is heard

"Humans are so complex; I don't understand why they desire to seek others to appear in such unusual ways." A small fairy appears from Kirito's coat pocket.

"_Wait...is that Yui?_" Karen and Hikaru mutter to themselves.

"What do you mean?" Leafa asks.

"I'd want to express emotion in simple ways." Yui says after kissing Kazuto's cheek.

"That's some AI, she nearly seems human. Are all private pixies like that?" Leafa asked, just slightly curious.

"She's...weirder than most AIs." Kazuto says with a light blush from the kiss, stuffing Yui in his coat pocket.

"I see. The desire to seek others-" Leafa mutters quietly, before Karen interrupts her.

"Not to ruin the moment, but I think we should get going." Karen pointed out, interrupting the conversation with mild reluctance in her tone.

"Right, let's go." Leafa says before she gets interrupted by a voice coming from the elevator.

"Leafa!" The voice called out, as the elevator door opens.

"Oh, Recon." Leafa asks.

"I can't believe you Leafa; you should've said something before you left!" Recon says.

"Sorry, I forgot to mention it Recon." Leafa laughed.

Recon sighs "Leafa, they said you left our group".

"Well, I did it from the spur of the moment actually. Anyway, what are you going to do Recon?" Leafa says nonchalantly.

"I want to go with you Leafa but...there's something bothering me, I need to do a little investigation so I'm going to be staying with Sigurd's party for a while. Kirito, Ashikaga, Ulkaios, Leafa has a tendency to get into trouble, so be careful." Recon says with mixed tones, he must've been in the lobby where they were and overheard the fight.

"Understood." Kazuto, Karen, and Hikaru reply in unison.

"And just to make things a little clear, Leafa's my-" Recon was cut off by Leafa stomping on his foot.

"The four of us are going to be in neutral territory for a while, send me a message if you need anything Recon." Leafa called out, not showing any anger.

* * *

Leafa and the others took off from the tower and begin flying away from Sylvain. They fly for roughly an hour when Hikaru begins shaking in his flight, having nearly fallen twice and being helped by Karen.

"What's going on? I'm feeling a little weak..." Hikaru says feeling exhausted.

"I told you that you can't fly forever, we're probably reaching our limits, let's touch down and take a break." Leafa explains with a mildly stern tone, emphasizing how she mentioned the limits of the flight engine.

"Are you going to be alright Ulkaios?" Karen asks in a concerned tone, with her protective instincts from Senryaku returning.

"I...don't know." Hikaru shook his head sadly.

"What's wrong Ulkaios? Do you have a low constitution stat?" Leafa asks.

"I don't know. I hate that I'm being a burden though." Hikaru says.

"It's okay; the Ancient Forest is nearby, how about we stop there everyone." Leafa says with a casual tone, proposing an idea on where to rest for a short while.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [16:00] August 1st, 2025

The group of four are resting on a small island among many above the forest. Leafa and Kazuto are still in good shape and have plenty of flying time available to them so they decide to hunt some wyverns, with Kazuto using his sword and Leafa demonstrating a unique skill of magic. However, Hikaru is feeling exhausted and Karen decided to sit with him while he rests. It took him a few hours to fully recover from this new sensation and the burden of flying.

"Hikaru, are you alright? Do you have the same situation as our time in Aincrad?" Karen asks worriedly.

"I don't know." Hikaru groans a little as he walks about a little before walking back to Karen "I may regret asking this, but I want you to slash me." Hikaru says with a grim expression, wondering if he lacks pain absorbers like in Aincrad. He doesn't want to run into a scenario of him being in pain in battle. He wants to test the factor in a controlled environment first as he can foresee two outcomes: He has a pain absorber and can fight as free as he desires with minimal to no negative repercussions, or he once again lacks it, meaning that Hikaru will have to fight more cautiously because of the flight engine being a far more powerful, yet risky factor.

"Are you insane?! If it's the same situation like Aincrad, you'll be in pain if I slash you!" Karen says in utter shock, with her developing a scowl at the idea.

"Just do it! Remember that I'm good at minimizing the pain's effects." Hikaru lightly shouts, telling Karen to do this.

"If you insist..." Karen muttered to herself angrily.

Karen draws a small sword she bought in Sylvain for 300 Yuld and very reluctantly slashes Hikaru's arm, leaving a gash of data three inches deep.

"Hikaru...how do you feel?" Karen asks worriedly, with her not believing that she just attacked one of her friends in such a way. This one action made her feel like she's betraying each and every one of her friends from how she just attacked one of her colleagues and closest friends.

"I feel...nothing, I can't feel pain here!" Hikaru broke into a grin, seeing the virtual gash in his arm yet he can't feel the sensation at all.

"That's wonderful...I was so scared for a minute there." Karen sighs in relief.

"Anyway, Karen, since you're here, were you able to find any clues on where Katsuo and the others are?"

"Sadly no. Though, I've been working with a player named Okamoto to try finding them, but we split ways for a while before I went to Sylvain. She told me she was going to wait for me in Lugru, an underground city."

"I see, does that mean you'll need to leave us to find this Okamoto...um, would you mind if I called you Ash as a nickname?" Hikaru asks, with him being rather cautious at the end.

"Go ahead, Aio. anyway, to answer your question, not necessarily, I asked her to keep in touch with me on occasion. We met about two days after I was made a renegade." Karen says with a smile at the nickname she gave Hikaru.

"Aio? Really?" Hikaru asks disappointedly, wondering why Karen suddenly gave him a nickname, and why that of all things. His favorite nickname in Aincrad: Jinsoku was one given to him through reputation as a fast fighter, and it sounded much better than 'Aio'.

"If you want to call me Ash, I'm going to call you Aio, atleast, while we're using these new names. I could've easily decided to call you Ai, which is a girl's name." After saying this, Karen easily grinned at the look on Hikaru's face.

"Okay, okay, I'm okay with Aio, just...please don't call me Ai." Hikaru pleads desperately.

"Understood." Karen laughs at the response from Hikaru.

"How long have you all been here actually?" Hikaru asks curiously.

"Around two months, I can't recognize anyone from Aincrad aside from voice. I haven't been able to find anyone from SAO so I've been on my own, desperately trying to find people from Aincrad and establish a place for us to meet up." Karen's mood immediately dropped to a despondent level as she says this, having been searching for her friends ever since she got in this world two months ago.

"Well, now that the two of us and Kazuto are reunited, we'll do our best to find the others." Hikaru says happily.

"Yeah, we'll find them before too long." Karen says, trying to sound happy despite how distraught she is over the situation.

Kazuto and Leafa touch down on the island a little while after the conversation between Karen and Hikaru ended.

"Ulkaios, Ashikaga, sorry but I have to log out. I'll see you guys tomorrow." Leafa says with a small frown, before trying to smile about her being back later.

"Sure, but if you wouldn't mind, could you call us Ash and Aio? We know our game names are long, so we wanted to make things simpler." Karen says.

"Sure, Ash, Aio, I'll be back tomorrow." Leafa says, with Kazuto nodding, though he's a bit baffled at how Karen suddenly decided to give a nickname to herself and Hikaru, since she's never done such a thing before in the three years he's known her.

Leafa's body remains motionless for a time which is the sign of delayed log outs, so Karen and Hikaru exchange more conversation to pass time when Leafa's body vanishes, though Kazuto stays for a little while longer.

"Sorry Karen, Hikaru, but I have to go too. But I do have to say, it's been good seeing you guys again." Kazuto says with a sad smile.

"Likewise; I was worried I'd never see you all again. I feel like that if the three of us were able to find each other, we could find the others." Karen says with a small frown, trying to sound optimistic however.

"Yeah, take care of yourselves, alright? I'll come back tomorrow morning." Kazuto says as he begins to log out.

* * *

When Kazuto logs out, Karen opens her inventory and takes out a small sphere.

"Help me out. We should set up camp for the night." Karen seriously says to Hikaru.

"Oh, right. Um, what is that thing?"

"It's sort of like Aincrad's Mirage Sphere. Except for how, if you infuse it with magic, you can create a field and project a campsite. If you can help me, we can make a pretty big field."

"Um...how do I use magic?"

Karen sighs deeply and says "Okay, crash course. This is the spell needed to use this item. Just repeat what I say: Þeír slíta nótt dýpt svalr." *1

While Karen said the incantation, letters began floating around her and an indigo colored beam flows into the sphere.

"Okay. Let me try; Þeír slíta nótt dýpt slavr." Hikaru says, trying to repeat the incantation used by Karen, but doesn't do it right, having messed up one single verse in the incantation.

"W-Wait! That's not how you-!" Karen rapidly shouts to Hikaru, but is too late to stop the explosion and huge smoke cloud in the area.

The pair then cough rather deeply from the smoke inhalation "Get down!" Karen shouts, quickly diving to the ground with Hikaru doing the same.

"What in the world was that?!" Hikaru asks in shock, coughing from the smoke.

Karen coughs rather badly yet quickly responds to Hikaru's question "It's called the Spellword Fumble Effect. If you mess up an incantation...you saw what happened. God...I can barely breathe."

"Are you going to be okay Karen?" Hikaru asks in between his coughing.

"I think so." Karen mumbles weakly "Just be more careful, alright?"

"Yeah, I will." Hikaru sheepishly nods.

* * *

After some time passes and when the smoke clears, the pair then redo the spell and do it properly, projecting a rather fancy campsite that covers the floating island. Karen then uses a small fire spell to light the fire and places two boxes over it

"Try to make yourself comfy Hikaru, we're gonna be here awhile." Karen says with a mild sigh, laying down by the fire.

"Hey Karen, what race is Okamoto? I'm a little curious." Hikaru asks, sitting across from Karen near the fire.

"She's a member of the feline Cait Sith race. She's a good friend to have, and she knows nearly everything about this game. She's been helping me out in exchange for me saving her life against a very large group of Wyverns a while back. I don't know why, but she seems really familiar to me, but I can't put my finger on it." Karen says rather calmly, having been pondering why Okamoto was so familiar to her.

"I see; I'll trust your faith in this person Karen." Hikaru calmly replies, knowing that he may end up needed as much help as possible to find the other players from Aincrad.

"Thanks, she did mention she was going to get a few friends to come meet me in Lugru."

"I'm glad you've made new friends here, but I hope we can find Katsuo, Kana, Sylvia, Haruka, Mamoru, and the others soon." Hikaru says with mixed feelings.

"I miss them too Hikaru, the sooner we're reunited, the happier I'll be." Karen says quietly.

* * *

Karen then grabs the two boxes that were lying above the fire on the metal spit and she hands one to Hikaru.

"Here you go, I imagine you're hungry." Karen says, holding back a minor blush.

"I have to say, I'm glad you always went the extra mile to help me back in Aincrad and now. Thank you Karen." Hikaru says in a grateful tone, blushing lightly at the generous gesture.

"U-Um...it's nothing, I had to do it because in our group, the only other master cooks were Kana and Haruka. Kana was busy taking care of Katsuo and Haruka was not with us most of the time." Karen says nervously while blushing, trying to pull off a tsundere-style explanation, which does not faze Hikaru, as he's been around Karen long enough to know when she's lying.

"Still, I'm grateful." Hikaru says.

"So you two _really_ are who I thought you were." The navigation pixie: Yui says, flying out from a tree on the far end of the floating island, hiding from when Hikaru caused that explosion and coming out now.

"Yui, is that really you?" Karen asks in mild shock.

"That's right, I'm glad to see you Karen, Hikaru" Yui says happily, flying toward the pair.

"Yui, I want to ask you, with your AI background, would it be possible for you to find Katsuo, Kana, Sylvia, Haruka, Mamoru, or the others?" Karen asks, wanting to get to business ASAP.

"Sadly no, I no longer have access to admin controls, all I can access is map data, and character profiles to a very limited extent." Yui says sadly, feeling guilty about the lack of abilities she has access to in this world.

"You said you can access profiles, how far can you go with that?" Karen asks curiously, wanting to know how much or rather, how little, she has to work with.

"All I have access to is character names and the date they joined." Yui says quietly.

"Yui, if you can, could you compile a list of players who joined in the last two months? It would help lower the odds." Karen asks seriously, if they want to find the others, they need to lower the number of variables.

"Let me see..." Yui says while putting her hands on both sides of her head. "There are over five hundred players who started playing within the last two months."

"Over five _hundred_?! How are we supposed to find our friends out of such a huge list?! And especially since this world is so huge!" Hikaru exclaims in horror.

"We'll figure something out Aio. Worst case, we just wander this world until we find people from Aincrad. Anyway, Yui, can you tell which players entered this game through unorthodox methods?"

"Sadly no, the system of the game won't let me do so." Yui said sadly. "And there's too many people for me to properly list off. I'll just randomly list three people I see in the list...eto...Okamoto, Yamakage, and Minatoya." Yui says calmly and frowned slightly at the end, listing off three random players she sees in the list out of over five hundred.

"Okay, I know Okamoto first hand, and she's not from SAO, I know that much. I've heard of Yamakage, he's very fierce and has made it pretty high up the Salamander military chain of command, and he's only been here two months. I've never heard of Minatoya before, but it wouldn't hurt to try seeking her out. But for now, we should try aiming for Yamakage. I doubt he's one of our SAO players, but who knows." Karen says with a frown. "Actually, Yui, are you hungry?" Karen continues worriedly.

"Not really Karen, my conversion into a Navigation Pixie removed my need to eat, but I won't turn down food if you offer it Karen." Yui says quietly and happily at the end.

"Very well Yui, let me bring out a new bento box, but I think it'll be too large considering your pixie form, would it be possible for you to change to human form?" Karen says, opening her inventory window.

Yui changes her to her human form, accepts the bento and is about to begin eating but is interrupted by Karen

"Yui, mind waiting a moment? I just remembered that the food there is near frozen, let's warm it up first, okay?"

"Okay."

* * *

The group wait a few minutes for Yui's bento to warm up and they then eat the food that Karen made, and while they eat, Hikaru decides to ask Karen something he noticed a while ago

"Karen, you don't need to answer this if you don't want to, but you seem to know a lot about the renegades. Is there a reason for this?" Hikaru asks softly, not wanting to push Karen but he knew that Karen seemed down when speaking of it.

"It's not something I want to remember, but I know you'll never let me live it down unless I tell you, so I guess I'll explain. It happened when I arrived in this world about two months ago. I was fighting a particularly strong monster and when I slayed it, some Imp players saw how strong I was and how strong the strategies I used were so I was drafted into the Imp army. That afternoon, we were fighting a boss in the mountains to the northwest of Imp territory and I was assigned as aerial diversion, but I had no idea that I could even fly then so... I fled in the direction of Dragon Valley north of Salamander territory and abandoned the group I was assigned to. After an hour passed, I got a notice that I was exiled from the Imp nation on the charge of desertion. I spent a full week traveling Dragon Valley's northern border and noticed Okamoto near Ruger Corridor. I saved her life and she's been helping me ever since as a thank you. That is how I was made a renegade." Karen replies in a downcast tone, looking down to the ground in sadness, with those events having scarred her a little but nowhere near Aincrad's level.

"Oh...uh...I'm sorry for asking about it Karen. I didn't want you bringing up such painful memories." Hikaru says quietly, feeling guilty about making her remember things she may have wanted to keep quiet about.

"It's alright. It doesn't exactly bug me. Things like this happen when you draft people out of the blue." Karen says calmly, not wanting to show that it actually _is_ a sensitive topic for her.

They continue eating the food and shortly after they finish eating the food, Yui returns to pixie form and flies in front of Karen.

"Would you mind if I sleep with you since Papa isn't here?" Yui asks cutely.

"Go ahead Yui. We don't mind, though we're going to be awake for a while longer." Karen returns with a calm smile.

"Thank you." Yui says with a big grin.

Yui flies inside Karen's shirt pocket and apparently falls asleep nearly instantly with Karen and Hikaru lightly smiling at the situation.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [18:00] August 1st, 2025

Hikaru has fallen asleep, with him feeling exhausted from all of the events happening since he arrived in the morning to now, with Yui flying out of Karen's shirt pocket in her sleep, laying down near Hikaru in her human form and Hikaru instinctively pulls her close as she does so, with Karen smiling even more at the scene she's seeing.

"Hehe, those two look so cute together." Karen lightly giggles, seeing the pair sleeping next to each other like father and daughter or like young siblings.

Not long after seeing this, she grips her head, suffering from a minor headache

"Ow...what's...going on?" Karen groans weakly as she grips her head. "This hurts so bad…" After some time passed, the headache fades as mysteriously as it appeared. "What...what the hell was that? Hm." Karen rubs the temple of her forehead a little "Hehe, I shouldn't worry about it." Karen quietly giggles after she finished rubbing her temple.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [19:30] August 1st, 2025

Karen stretches her arms and lightly yawns. She then glances at the see-through tent where Hikaru and Yui are sleeping in and when she is about to fall asleep herself, she hears people nearby

"Get away from me!" The voice, which sounds like a teenaged girl, shouts angrily, with it sounding scared as well.

"Not a chance Undine. Give yourself up and we'll give you the opportunity to become a healer to our Alpha Battalion willingly."

"No! I don't want to work for you Salamanders!" The girl shouts in the same tone, flying away from a group of eight players fully armored in red.

Karen brings out one of her spears and flies toward the Undine girl and the Salamander players

"Hey, leave that girl alone!" Karen shouts angrily, throwing her spear at a Salamander and does it accurately enough to pierce the player's heart, reducing him to a Remain Light status nearly instantly, since all of Karen's high level stats from SAO crossed over.

"GAH!" The Salamander player stabbed by Karen's spear shouts in pain as he's reduced to a Remain Light, with the other Salamanders and the Undine player staring at Karen in utter surprise.

"How dare you attack my team! You all, get that Undine. I'll fight this Imp." The leader of this group exclaims angrily "You will pay for disrespecting me, Major Yamakage!"

"_Ah crap. I did not want to fight Yamakage like this! He's one of the strongest Salamanders there is! But I have no choice, I need to keep that girl safe!_" Karen mutters fearfully in her mind, with her drawing one of her stronger spears and taking up a customized Shaolin stance she built with training from Katsuo in Aincrad.

"_That style...isn't that…?_" Yamakage asks himself, seeing the custom style being used by this Imp player "Elwing, everyone; change of plans. Imp, let's make a deal. If you can defeat my whole team here, we'll retreat. If you fail, you and that girl must join my battalion. Elwing, lead the charge."

"Hai, Yamakage-dono." Elwing, the sub-leader to Yamakage, says with a fierce salute, drawing her katana.

"If it means protecting her, fine by me. I won't let you Salamanders force her to help your plans." Karen says fiercely.

"...I recognize you. You're that imp renegade: Ashikaga! You've been destroying entire brigades of Salamanders! You've been a massive thorn to us." Elwing exclaims, having glanced at Karen's appearance.

"You know her Elwing?" Yamakage asks in mild surprise.

"Somewhat, Yamakage-dono. We met once northwest of Dragon Valley while you were at the leaders' council roughly two weeks ago. She was somehow able to wipe out half our battalion before she fled with Okamoto's Dragoon."

"Okamoto? She's helping this Imp girl?" Yamakage asks curiously "_Strange, why would Okamoto help her? Izanagi, Yugana, and Okamoto have helped us so much and now I hear they're back-stabbing me and Elwing? Strange._" Although it's hidden because of Yamakage's helmet, he is smirking at the update from Elwing when she mentioned how Karen defeated half of Yamakage's battalion "_Also, this Imp was able to wipe out half my battalion single-handed? Doing so requires significant strategy and strength since I personally helped train nearly half of these guys and I was trained by Karen and the others in Senryaku and Aincrad. I doubt even General Eugene could do such things so...she has to be an Aincrad player. Only they are so accustomed to VRMMO physics. And such a strong tactician...Karen. Is she this imp player? Ashikaga?...I need to investigate further. Hm, if this Ashikaga truly is Karen, I guess that explains why Okamoto and the others are helping her._" Yamakage says in his mind, wanting to see if this Ashikaga truly is the Karen he knows.

Elwing and two other Salamanders in the group draw their weapons and dash toward Karen and take up aerial combat, but when the two Salamanders got close, something hits them and they instantly enter Remain Light state. Karen and Elwing are left wide-eyed at the sudden death of the two Salamanders. Yamakage, the Salamanders, and the Undine player look at the battle in utter awe considering the sudden deaths of the two players. "What the hell was that?!" Yamakage is rather horrified by the sudden demise of the two Salamanders, since they were some of the best in the battalion and they were slain in seconds.

Karen, the Undine player, and the Salamanders in the area rapidly look in various directions, looking to see what attacked the Salamanders.

"Major Yamakage! Unidentified monsters approaching from the west!" One of the Salamanders shouts, noticing a large swarm of hornet like monsters.

One icon on the creatures is extremely recognizable by three of the people here, which is a ringed Eye.

"_XANA?! Impossible!_" Karen, Yamakage, and the Undine player exclaim in their minds. "_How did XANA get here in Alfheim?! He was in Aincrad!_" The Undine player further exclaims, remembering that she died at least twice against XANA's monsters back in Aincrad.

"Salamanders, fall back and regroup with the rest of the battalion! Imp, Undine, if you want to survive, come with us!" Yamakage shouts to his men and to Karen's group, with him abandoning his prior mission of getting that Undine and focus on routing this new enemy force.

"I have friends out here, I don't want to abandon them!" Karen shouts, fearing for Hikaru's and Yui's safety.

"Fine, but just hurry! We need to get out of here before my battalion gets overwhelmed by these things!" Yamakage shouts, flying to the other Salamanders.

The Undine however flies toward Karen when Yamakage took off "I recognize your voice Karen, it's me Haruka!"

"Haruka?! Thank god I found you. Anyway, let's save the reintroduction for when we get Hikaru and link up with Yamakage's Salamanders." Karen says in surprise, before dashing toward Hikaru.

"Hikaru's here too?!" Haruka shouts, surprised to hear of Hikaru's appearance, before trying to put it aside for now "R-Right. let's get him and get to the Salamanders. They were trying to recruit me against my will, but I'll be safer with them than on my own if XANA's here." Haruka says, following Karen.

* * *

Karen and Haruka land on the island where Hikaru and Yui is and Karen swiftly undoes the spell of the campsite area

"Hikaru, get up! We need to get out of here!" Karen shouts fearfully, rapidly shaking Hikaru while Haruka is watching over the area in case more Hornets show up, which happens rather quickly.

"What are these things?! I know I never saw such things in Aincrad before!" Haruka shouts, using some magic on these new creatures.

"K-Karen…? What's wrong?" Hikaru mumbles weakly, still half-asleep from Karen's harsh wake-up call.

"Get your ass moving Hikaru! XANA is here in Alfheim! We need to get out of here!" Karen shouts, pulling Hikaru up.

"Huh…? Wait, XANA?!" Hikaru mumbles, before regaining his senses "But how did-" Hikaru tries to continue before being interrupted by Karen

"No time to chat! This area's getting overwhelmed, we need to regroup with Yamakage!" Karen exclaims, helping Hikaru to his feet.

"B-But what about Kazuto and Leafa?!"

"We'll get them later, but for now we need to get out of this area!"

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [20:00] August 1st, 2025

The group flies in the direction of Yamakage's battalion and finds that they set up camp outside Lugru Corridor, with the area being overrun with Hornets and the various monsters used in Aincrad: Krabs, Creepers, Tarantulas, and some new kind of squid monster.

"What the hell are these-GAH!" One of the Salamanders shouts fearfully, being shot repeatedly by a Creeper and being reverted to Remain Light status.

"_Damn it! We're getting overwhelmed, just like Aincrad! Why is this happening so quickly?! At least these people can't die, that's one thing._" Yamakage shouts in his mind, dodging the attacks from these new monsters.

"Takuro! Major, we can't hold this area at this rate, we need to fall back to Gadan!" Elwing shouts fearfully as she sees one of her comrades die, trying to dodge the attacks from the Tarantulas.

"We can't do that Lieutenant. Our mission takes priority!" Yamakage retorts angrily, trying to get close to the monsters to destroy them.

"But Yamakage-dono!" Elwing pleads desperately before being stopped by Yamakage

"You know our mission Elwing! We are Salamanders! We never abandon our mission, no matter how many losses we take! Everyone, reorganize your formations and bring the fight to these beasts, follow my lead!" Yamakage shouts fiercely, drawing his two swords: Onyx Shark and Titanium Heart and attacking the ringed eyes on two of the Creepers.

"R-Right! Everyone, follow Yamakage's command!" Elwing shouts, drawing her sword and directing the remaining Salamanders to battle.

"Come on Aio, let's help out the Salamanders. Um...whatever name you're using, cover us with healing."

"Mikuya, just like Aincrad and got it Ashikaga."

"Hmm, for now, would you mind if I merely call you Miku? And call me Ash." Karen asks calmly.

"I...don't mind it, but why?"

"No reason, but I just kind of want to do things like this. I have been since...a little while ago." Karen admits with a small sheepish smile.

"Is that why you gave me the nickname: Aio?" Hikaru asks.

"Partly, but come on, Yamakage and the others need our help!"

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [20:45] August 1st, 2025

The monsters belonging to XANA have been pushed back for the time being, but the entire Salamander group belonging to Yamakage aside from himself, Elwing, and one other member have been slain and been sent back to Salamander territory

"Thank you for your assistance Ashikaga, all of you. We owe you for helping us in our fight. As a gesture of goodwill, we'll fall back and give up pursuit of our mission for now." Yamakage says, bowing in appreciation.

"I must thank you as well Ashikaga. You are a thorn in our side yet you still chose to help us." Elwing replies solemnly, bowing as well.

"If it's any condolence, I never wanted to fight you Salamanders, you fought me and I defended myself." Karen nervously chuckles at Elwing's remark.

"Heh. Elwing, Kimori, get back to Fellyre Shire and regroup with General Eugene and his soldiers to prepare for our mission. I need to speak with these three privately." Yamakage chuckles before sternly stating his order.

"But...Major-" Elwing tries to say in concern before being interrupted.

"Elwing, I am giving you a direct order. Fall back and regroup with General Eugene. I'll catch up." Yamakage shouts fiercely to his sub-leader.

"Yes sir." Elwing replies despondently, flying away with Kimori in tow.

"That was just harsh Yamakage." Hikaru says in mild shock over Yamakage's fierce attitude there.

"Sometimes I have to be harsh to her. She has many of the requirements of being an ideal leader: She's honest, fiercely loyal, strong, she knows the strengths and weaknesses of a lot of people in my battalion and she never criticizes them for it. In fact, she goes out of her way to help them refine their strengths and dispel as much of their weakness as she can. But she's a bit bull-headed and doesn't listen to me sometimes. However, she is still a strong leader and everyone knows she handles leadership on my behalf. I can't stand it much. If she worked on her own weaknesses, she'd be an ideal leader, just like this one girl I know. She rarely fought granted, but she was a very good tactician and her very presence raised everyone's morale because of how hard she pushed herself to help others." Yamakage says calmly, glancing at the sky.

"Yeah. That girl was a strong tactician, she was fair and honest for the most part. Her own special ability helped cement her reputation as a strong tactician for the others." Karen continues, knowing who Yamakage truly is after hearing him speak and referencing a girl with strong skill in strategy.

"How did…? Wait...hehe. Karen, good to see you." Yamakage says with a small laugh, removing his helmet for the first time since he got the armor and reveals the person beneath it. Although his hair color is a darker red, the face of the reputable Major Yamakage is nearly identical to that of Senryaku's second sub-leader in Aincrad: Masaru or more commonly called by his friends: Katsuo Viperia.

"Katsuo. I'm glad to see you." Karen says softly, hugging Katsuo.

"Likewise. The last two months have been hell without you guys around. I hate to dash, but...I have to return to the others. Also, be careful you three." Katsuo replies in the same tone, hugging Karen for a short time before letting go.

"Why?" Haruka asks curiously, wondering why Katsuo added 'Be careful you three', with her thinking that it's because of XANA.

"Captain Kagemune assigned a small brigade of Salamanders after a Sylph and Spriggan that was in this area. The brigade is determined to slay the pair, and I don't want you three hurt because of them. However, since XANA has returned, I doubt Kagemune will be able to get here. I imagine all Salamander forces will be reassigned to repel those new monsters and they'll need my knowledge to do so."

"Can't you do anything Katsuo? Kazuto and Leafa don't deserve being hunted." Hikaru worriedly asks, being sincere about his desire to keep them safe.

"Kazuto?! I'm guessing he's the Spriggan?"

Hikaru and Karen nod in response

"Crap, if I knew it was him sooner...god damn it. Look, I can't go against Kagemune now, it's too late. That brigade will be here tomorrow afternoon to ambush you all. As soon as Kazuto and Leafa get on, get them to Lugru. You'll be safe there. I need to go. Best of luck Hikaru, Karen, Haruka." Katsuo lightly snarls in irritation, recommending a path of action before giving his farewells and putting his helmet back on, then flying away to the rest of the Salamanders.

When Katsuo flies off, Hikaru, Karen, and Haruka are left in the area

"Karen, Hikaru, we should get to a town and rest for the night. There's one about half an hour south of here. I actually was traveling with another Undine named Liatris but we got separated when the Salamanders began chasing me, she may be there actually."

"Lead the way Miku." Karen says with a smile.

"Okay um...not that I mind, but we're by ourselves; you can call me Haruka."

"What's the fun in that? I want to call you Miku." Karen says with a giddy smile, flying south to the settlement.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [21:00] August 1st, 2025

With Karen not around, Haruka and Hikaru talk a little bit

"Um...Hikaru..." Haruka tries to ask, albeit rather awkwardly at Karen's sudden attitude.

"Don't ask me. This is as much a shock to me as it is to you. Katsuo sounded like an absolute jerk, Karen's too upbeat...this is getting a little bit weird." Hikaru says, knowing what question is on her mind, as it's on his as well.

"Well...let's try to follow her lead alright? She may be acting weird, but she's still our leader. Someone we can trust with our lives…right?"

"I hope so. While she was friendly toward us all, she was never this...bubbly." Hikaru mutters quietly. "Yui, can you figure anything out about this?"

Yui flies out of Hikaru's coat pocket and floats in front of him "Let me see." Yui says, putting her hands around her head for a few moments "Hmm...it's a little tough to confirm, but I'm seeing signs of accelerated soul modification in both Karen and Katsuo."

"Soul modification? What are you talking about?" Hikaru asks agape.

"Someone or something is trying to change Karen, Katsuo, and who knows how many others."

"Yui, is it similar to what happened to myself and XANA?"

"Yes and no. I've been trying to do a little investigation on the matters of yourself and XANA and a theory I have is that it was a significantly advanced process that must have taken years to do. Look, when I say this, try not to panic as it's just one of my theories." Yui says calmly, trying to ease the upcoming revelation without horrifying Hikaru.

"What is it Yui?" Hikaru asks curiously, wondering what Yui's thinking about.

"Well...I think that...you aren't exactly...alive." Yui says weakly, hating herself for outright saying it.

"Not...alive...? Yui, please tell me you're joking." Hikaru pleads.

"I wish I was, but Hikaru, remember that this is just a theory of mine. Considering what I know of dimensional travel, which is not much granted, but considering your entrance into this dimension; I have a suspicion that your real self perished and an AI was created of yourself, with all of your memories being uploaded to make it think it was you."

"I...what?" Hikaru asks, with himself and Haruka staring at Yui with mixed emotions.

"I'm sorry I had to say it Hikaru, but considering your own circumstances, it's not very feasible to believe that you're still a human being. It's far more feasible that you're an Artificial Intelligence with your memories and emotions being uploaded to it to make it seem like you're human. As a result of your inherited senses, you may have felt pain and exhaustion, though in reality, it's all fake. The theories that exist about dimensional travel suggest that it's extremely dangerous when not used properly. XANA easily survived the travel because of how it's not alive like you were. Damage is expected, but repairable, but for living beings, it's likely that you died or were close to dead when you arrived in this world."

Hikaru is left utterly speechless at the new revelation of how Hikaru is possibly not human like his friends and is possibly an AI like Yui. For the last four years, Hikaru would never have even considered this possibility. However, he can't exactly deny since he knew that he woke up in the Forest of Doubt, so he can't shoot down the possibility of prior manipulation from someone on the other side.

"Hikaru, it doesn't matter if you're human or an AI. You're still our friend and we spent years fighting side-by-side." Haruka says, lightly hugging Hikaru to cheer him up.

"Thanks Haruka. For now, let's try catching up with Karen." Hikaru says with a small forced smile, feeling glad that Haruka's trying to cheer him up, even though he's feeling so rattled over the situation.

"It's no problem Hikaru. You know that we Aincrad players have to stick together, even through Hell's deepest labyrinth." Haruka says, with her lightly joking at the end.

"Haha. Thanks Haruka, I needed a pick-up from that shocking revelation."

"You're welcome. Now let's go catch up with Karen, baka." Haruka replies with a friendly sarcastic insult, flying to catch up with Karen.

"Oh, you're going down. Come on Yui, let's get going." Hikaru says with a friendly, yet smug tone, trying to ignore the shocking revelation right now.

"Okay." Yui says with a friendly smile, flying into Hikaru's shirt pocket.

* * *

Hikaru and Haruka catch up to Karen who is floating near one of the islands in the Ancient Forest and when they catch up with her, they fly to the settlement south of this area.

Author's Notes: *1. I _HATE_ having to deal with the spell names. What I used for this spell is just taking parts of two different spells from the anime.


	5. Chapter 4: Unity leads to Separation

Hikaru has found three of his friends from Aincrad: Karen, Kazuto, and Haruka. Hikaru now has to find Katsuo, Sylvia, Amaterasu (Kana's true name), Mamoru and the others. However, trouble is brewing as XANA has somehow reappeared and appears far more intelligent than before as it seems to value the existence of its existing monsters and is using actual strategy in its methods instead of pure aggression, though it appears just as aggressive as before. How much intelligence is XANA capable of showing in this new world and how will it affect the players, who seem to be struggling to resist it?

_Disclaimer: I don't own anything apart from the words that I write and the characters that I create. Credit goes to the original creator of the SAO universe; credits also to the creators and contributors to the Code Lyoko series and related works._

Author Notes: If you want to understand this story fully, I would highly recommend reading my previous work: Reset Code Aincrad. Also, I've been giving this some thought and, I won't be using a beta reader for any chapter in this story, so I want you guys to review on what you think of my writing style without any checks from betas.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [7:30] August 2nd, 2025

Karen, Hikaru, and Haruka are in a small village named Ichihara having properly rested from all of the events that transpired yesterday, with Karen being the last one in the group to wake up. The group reconvene in the village plaza to discuss what to do now that XANA has made his presence known after they did some shopping in different parts of the village and figure out why the hostile AI actually retreated even though it easily overwhelmed Karen and the others. XANA never acted like this in Aincrad, since it used tactics of attrition, decapitation, and exhaustion, among others. Haruka also found out that her colleague discreetly fled back to Kirimachi when the Salamanders showed up, so Haruka decided to accompany Hikaru and Karen, feeling safer among the group.

"Good morning Aio, Miku." Karen says in a rather bubbly tone, just like how she acted the night before.

"Morning Ash. I see you're acting like you did yesterday."

"Yeah, why would I not? I've always been like this." Karen tilts her head in confusion at Hikaru's statement as it seemed like this was a new thing to him.

Hikaru and Haruka blink rapidly at Karen's statement, with them exchanging glances of heavy confusion at why Karen thinks she has always acted like this. Hikaru walks toward Karen and whispers

"_Karen, what's wrong with you? You rarely, if ever, act like this. You're friendly, but never this bubbly. You learned through your time in Aincrad that being bubbly like you are now is extremely dangerous._"

"_What are you talking about silly Aio? Seriously...um...what's Aincrad?_"

Hikaru is left utterly agape at how Karen seems to have forgotten Aincrad, which was the embodiment of everything in the last three years.

"_K-Karen, please tell me you're just joking around!_" Hikaru pleads desperately, praying that Karen's just trying to be comical.

"_Why are you freaking out Aio?_" Karen asks, not knowing why Hikaru's freaking out so much. "_Why does that name sound so familiar? Aincrad...Aincrad…_" Karen mutters in her mind, trying to wrack her mind for why the name Aincrad seems so familiar to her.

"Aio, Ash, we can't stay here. We need to return to the Ancient Forest and regroup with Kirito and Leafa." Haruka says sternly, hoping that XANA's monsters don't return again.

"Yeah, let's go." Hikaru nods seriously, summoning his dark green wings and taking flight to the island where Kazuto and Leafa were left.

* * *

The group fly back to the Ancient Forest and encounter Katsuo, Elwing, and Kimori sitting in one of the floating islands with them being visibly irritated about something. The trio land near them to let their flying time replenish somewhat while they talk.

"Yamakage? What are you doing here? I thought you left for Gadan yesterday." Hikaru asks curiously, keeping his cover intact and wonders why they're still here.

Katsuo groans when he sees the group and gets up to talk to them "Those damn monsters from before are roaming the entire area in force. We did manage to regroup with a small detachment from our faction but they attacked so rapidly and so strongly that we got scattered." Katsuo then beckons the group to get up "Look, we need your help here. The three of us can't fight these things on our own and I just know they're too strong for you guys either. Let's combine forces so we can survive. Do you agree to a temporary alliance?" Katsuo asks, extending his hand to make this official.

Haruka steps forward and shakes Katsuo's hand "We accept your alliance Yamakage. Just stop forcing me to serve your army. I'm helping you individually, not your entire army."

"Got it. As long as you're working with us, you won't be targeted by other Salamanders."

"So what do you need us to do Yamakage?" Haruka asks, stepping forward to become leader of this group since Karen's not acting like her usual self.

"We contacted some of our allies who were in Lugru before all this started. What we need to do is rendezvous with them. Once we do so, we should be able to make it back to Gadan."

"You want us going to Lugru to gather people so you can return to Salamander territory?" Haruka asks with a small scowl, wanting to be sure she heard him right.

"Mikuya, we are scattered and we've been hearing that a _lot_ of Salamanders are getting overwhelmed by these things. I even heard rumors that these things are beginning to encroach on Sylph, Imp, and Undine territory." Katsuo admits sadly, seeing Kimori and Elwing frown at the repetition of this piece of news.

"It's _that_ bad? I hope Lia-chan is doing okay." Haruka mumbles hearing of the situation from the Salamander Major.

"Lia-chan? Are you speaking of an Undine called Liatris?" Katsuo asks, with Haruka nodding in confirmation at his question.

"Do you know her Yamakage?"

"Yeah, we worked together during most of my campaigns since I entered this world. Lord Izanagi and his companions: Okamoto, Yugana, and Liatris have been helping me a lot."

"Really? If Oka-chan was helping you, why would she help me?" Karen interjects for the first time in a giddy manner, having gotten fed up with being quiet.

"Beats me, and right now, I don't care. Let's get to Lugru when we find your friends. Elwing, Kimori, I want you two to stay here in hiding. Keep me informed on any changes." Katsuo demands this of the remaining Salamanders under his command.

"Hai Yamakage-dono!" Elwing salutes rapidly in response to Katsuo's order as she and Kimori climb nearby trees to keep an aerial viewpoint over the surroundings.

"Alright all of you, let's get moving. Who knows when those damn monsters will return again and if they find us here, we'll be done for."

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [8:00] August 2nd, 2025

Haruka and her group land on the island where Kazuto and Leafa were and make it just in time as they log in

"Good morning Ash, Aio." Leafa says in a friendly manner before noticing Mikuya and bows toward her and when she notices Katsuo, she rapidly draws her katana and keeps it in a combat stance "W-Why is a Salamander here?!"

"Leafa, I'll explain later, but he's with us. We need to hurry to Lugru." Hikaru says to the fellow Sylph player, urging the need to hurry.

Leafa looks at Hikaru and sighs as she sheathes her katana "Fine, I'll give you the benefit of a doubt for now. But I want an answer to this later Ulkaios."

"Don't worry, I'll answer it when I can."

"Trust me Leafa, I'm as uneasy about working together just as much as you, but we have no damn choice right now." Katsuo snarls at Leafa rather angrily.

"Don't make me-" Leafa tries to counter before Haruka steps in

"Stop it all of you!" Haruka shouts in frustration, with the group staring at her in surprise from her sudden shout "This is _not_ helping anyone! Like or not, we need to work together! Yamakage, Leafa, put aside your differences right now and realize we're a team!" Haruka continues, knowing that division is ill needed since the vicious AI XANA is in this game world. She knows that it'll take little more than full unification of the entire playerbase to defeat their monsters, in addition to people who know how to fight back.

"She has a point you guys. Lay off the arguments." Hikaru growls angrily, knowing how dangerous Aincrad became when XANA appeared and it's happening again here in Alfheim. "Leafa, go on ahead of us. We need to talk privately."

"Um...alright." Leafa mumbles in confusion, flying toward Lugru.

"Okay, why are you guys so frantic?" Kazuto is confused on what's going on.

Haruka looks around to make sure Leafa's gone "Kazuto, I'm glad to see you. It's me, Haruka. But the reason I'm frantic is...XANA's back."

"Haruka? What a relief. Do you know if anyone else from Aincrad, aside from us, are here?" Kazuto smiles in relief before hearing of XANA, with his face darkening in anger rather strongly, remembering how vicious that damned AI was. "How long has that damn AI been here?"

"It showed itself not long after you left Kazuto." Hikaru informs him of the situation of XANA's arrival.

Kazuto clicks his teeth angrily after hearing that XANA showed up right after he left "Damn it. I'm sorry Hikaru, Karen. If I had known, I would've stayed to help you fight."

"It's okay Kiri. You couldn't have known." Karen giggles happily, trying to reassure the worried Kazuto, causing the group to blink in surprise.

"Okay, what the hell happened to you Ash?" Katsuo angrily asks, wanting to know what the hell is making her act this way.

"What do you mean?" Karen asks innocently.

"You know what I-!" Katsuo tries to shout before being stopped by Haruka

"Stop it, both of you!" Haruka shouts, trying to break up the fight "Look, we can not afford to fight each other! XANA has returned and it clearly is more strategic this time!"

"What do you mean Haruka?" Kazuto asks, wondering what Haruka has on her mind.

"I saw what happened before. XANA's monsters fled when we gained the upper hand and they're focusing their efforts on keeping players divided if what Katsuo said is true. This AI is a lot smarter this time. Before, it didn't care one bit about taking losses, but it's being far more strategic now and is taking steps on keeping powerful players isolated, and many of those powerful players are Salamanders."

"Hmm...that actually makes sense. In terms of physical strength, the Salamander military is the strongest of all the races, so it makes sense for this XANA to keep us scattered. It's why we need to get the allies I asked for and fast."

"What will that do Katsuo?" Hikaru wants to know the exact specifics of his plan here.

"We need to increase our numbers so we can fight those monsters. Those monsters wiped out my entire battalion save myself, my sub-leader, and one other member. They're all in Salamander territory and we're trapped here. I want to remedy that, especially since…" Katsuo says, stopping himself at the end, as he was about to give away details about a secret Op the Salamanders are planning.

"Since...what?" Haruka asks, wondering why Katsuo stopped himself.

"None of your damn business." Katsuo snarls angrily.

"Damn Katsuo. You were never this hostile before!" Hikaru retorts with the same amount of anger.

"Okay, why the hell do you all keep calling me Katsuo?" Katsuo shouts, wanting to know why they keep using that name.

* * *

Hikaru, Haruka, and Kazuto all gasp in horror, as Katsuo has apparently forgotten his real name

"Yamakage, Ash, go on ahead of us. We need to talk privately." Haruka says with a fierce frown.

"Whatever you want." Katsuo sighs, flying away with Karen in tow.

When they're gone, the trio group up to deliberate

"What in the world happened to them?!" Kazuto exclaims, wondering what in the world is making Karen and Katsuo act this way.

"That's what I want to know. Yui, do you have any ideas?" Hikaru mumbles, before asking Yui for her input.

"It's what I told you before Hikaru, but it's much stronger this time. Their souls are being modified rather strongly. I suspect that until now, the program doing this has not been able to directly interface with their souls but when it connected, significant changes were made to them." Yui frowns, feeling sad that Karen and Katsuo are changing so much so suddenly through outside manipulation.

"Actually, I don't understand something. Why is it that Karen and Katsuo were affected but I wasn't? And what about you Hikaru? We can both recall Aincrad." Haruka asks no one in particular, wondering why those two were affected and not herself or Hikaru.

"I'm not really sure. But we'll find a way to deal with this gradually." Hikaru says with a small smile, trying to reassure Haruka.

"Guys, I hate to rain on your parade, but...well, I don't know about you Hikaru, but if you guys don't return to reality by the time this month ends...you won't make it." Kazuto says with a heavy despondent frown, making Haruka, Hikaru, and even Yui gasp very strongly.

"W-W-WHAT?!" Haruka shouts with a great deal of anger, confusion, and fear in her voice from hearing Kazuto say 'you won't make it'.

"Haruka, try to calm down when I say this." Kazuto rapidly replies, with Hikaru quickly trying to calm down the girl.

"Sorry Kazuto. You just freaked me out. Mind elaborating?" Haruka deeply inhales and exhales, trying to calm herself down.

"Andrew told me that you guys and everyone else still comatose will...die if you aren't freed in a month. Your vitals are beginning to drop and the machines keeping you all alive are beginning to fail. Hence, why you all only have one more month. I'm not sure about you Hikaru."

"Mmmm...one thing worrying me is how Karen and Katsuo are being altered so badly. I've only found Keiko and Morita before now but I hope they're doing better in this regard." Haruka mumbles quietly, trying her best to ignore what Kazuto had just said.

"Come on, let's focus on this later." Hikaru urges, wanting to regroup with the others.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [10:30] August 2nd, 2025

Haruka's group have arrived in Lugru and divided into three different groups: Hikaru and Kazuto went to keep an eye on Karen because of how she's not acting like herself, Katsuo went off on his own somewhere in town, leaving Haruka by herself as she walks to a small park, sits down on a bench and sighs deeply

"This is just horrible. After everything I've heard since I've met up with them, I just…" Haruka groans and cries a little as she stares at the ground, with a Cait Sith male with brown hair, green eyes, and a bow on his back, walking up to her.

"You okay miss?" The man's rather halcyon voice is rather familiar when Haruka looks up from the ground.

"I-I'm okay. Thanks for-" Haruka stares at the man for a short time "M-Mamoru!" Haruka exclaims and hugs her guardian.

"H-Haruka?!" Mamoru lets out the same amount of surprise seeing his foster daughter for the first time since Aincrad. "Are you alright? I heard you crying quite a bit." Mamoru asks, hugging Haruka back.

"Kinda. I'm just...I'm trying to figure out a lot of things right now." Haruka mumbles, crying into Mamoru's shoulders a tiny bit out of relief to see a very familiar face, the only face Haruka knows in real life.

"Well, I'll help you out as much as I can Haruka. We were raised as brother and sister after all. Just tell me what's been happening."

"Putting it simply, I actually found Karen, Katsuo, and Hikaru yesterday and...XANA showed up as well."

"XANA?! That damn AI is back?"

"Yeah. And from what I've seen, XANA's a lot smarter this time."

"You sure Haruka?"

"I'm sure." Haruka solemnly nods, knowing how XANA's being a lot more strategic this time.

"Crap. It's troublesome enough having a fierce, near unstoppable enemy being clueless. But if such an enemy becomes intelligent, dear god." Mamoru's face becomes remarkably pale, knowing how dangerous enemies can become if given intelligence.

"Yeah. XANA's monsters retreated when we had the upper hand and they're currently overwhelming the Salamanders and keeping them separated." Haruka says, while telling Mamoru about what happened.

"Holy crap, they've got the _Salamanders_ overwhelmed? They have one of the strongest armies in this entire game world!" Mamoru is left utterly perturbed, learning that XANA's monsters has one of the strongest armies in Alfheim scattered.

"I'm aware. Anyway, I just hope Keiko and Morita are okay. I was working with them for a while before we parted ways."

"You were able to find people from Aincrad before Karen's group? I'm impressed. I haven't been able to find anyone at all. I did get lucky enough to be made a member of Lady Alicia's royal guard though."

"I see, anyway, why are you here Mamoru?"

"Oh yeah, Yamakage called me here alongside a few other people. He has some sort of mission for us all."

Haruka gasps as she remembers that Katsuo brought the group to help him and what's left of his brigade return to Salamander territory "Oh snap! I can't believe I forgot that! We need to hurry!" Haruka runs to the town square where Katsuo and the others should be waiting.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [11:00] August 2nd, 2025

Haruka and Mamoru go to the town square and see Hikaru, Karen, Kazuto, Katsuo, and Leafa there, with a small group of people in front of them. The new people, to Haruka, are Izanagi, Yugana, Okamoto, and a girl from the Puca race with gold hair and eyes.

"Yamakage, why did you call for us? You know I'm extremely busy." The Puca girl asks angrily, apparently knowing the Major well.

"Minatoya, you know why I called for you all, but this time, I must ask for your help prematurely."

"I know you mentioned asking for our help with a mission later on, but why ask for our help early Yamakage?" Yugana asks calmly, wanting to know why Yamakage is asking for their help prematurely, before the big Salamander Op.

"Speaking of which Yamakage, I'm not fond of that. You're trying to get me to commit treason against my own race for this!" Mamoru snarls angrily toward Katsuo.

"Wait, what?" Hikaru rapidly asks, wondering what that was about.

"Yamakage, we're by ourselves so just tell them of it." Izanagi says with a small sigh, noticing the new people showing up "Despite this particular Op, I'm glad you've been willing to help me so much Pulse." Izanagi replies with Mamoru giving a small nod toward him.

"Fine." Katsuo clicks his teeth angrily before looking toward Karen, Hikaru, and Haruka "The Cait Sith and Sylph leaders are having a secret meeting tomorrow to discuss an alliance. The Salamanders are going to attack that meeting and defeat the two leaders: Sakuya and Alicia so we can tax their cities and take a third of both of their treasuries. Once we do this, we'll procure ancient-class equipment for our entire army and make an attempt up Yggdrasil with Undine healers provided by Lord Izanagi supporting us with high level healing magic."

"I don't approve of this one bit! The fact you all want to work with this Salamander sickens me! I'm leaving." Leafa shouts angrily before running off.

"W-Wait! Leafa!" Kazuto shouts out, trying to get Leafa to come back, to no avail. He then chases after her to try explaining the situation.

"Nice going, now the Sylph and Cait Sith will know about our attack. They'll change the meeting ground and we won't be able to attack them to get the money to fund our Yggdrasil raid." Katsuo growls angrily to Izanagi, since Izanagi's persistence ruined the entire Op. "Anyway, I called you all here to ask for your assistance on returning to Salamander territory."

"Return to Salamander territory? I uh...mind elaborating on that?" Yugana asks, feeling very confused on this.

"New monsters of unknown design have been swarming over this entire area. My brigade got wiped out from these things save Elwing and Kimori. Hence, why I need your aid." Katsuo's reply receives stares of utter awe from Mamoru, Minatoya, Izanagi, Yugana, and Okamoto.

"Y-You lost your entire brigade to monsters?! You trained them over half of them yourself!"

"You don't think I know that Izanagi! I have no idea how these things were able to overwhelm me."

"I know how it was possible. XANA is behind it all." Hikaru interjects, knowing many things about that AI.

"XANA? What in the world is XANA?" Yugana is left clueless, having no idea what Hikaru was talking about, but Minatoya loudly gasps at the term.

"Uh...Minatoya, you okay?" Izanagi worriedly asks, hearing her gasp.

"Urk...dammit, I...Ulkaios, how do you know about XANA?" Minatoya demands angrily, facing him.

"I was an Aincrad player. That's how." Hikaru retorts, keeping his calm disposition about the matter in face to Minatoya's anger.

"You too huh? My name there was Elena." Minatoya quietly mumbles, before revealing herself as Sylvia.

"Heh, I know you all too well: Gold Valkyria of Senryaku. I worked alongside you as a member with the nickname: Jinsoku." Hikaru grins, as he remembers the nickname many players gave him because of his fast speed and swift battle style, with the nickname literally meaning swift.

"Hahaha." Minatoya begins laughing rather strongly, differing quite a bit from the anger mere moments ago.

"Minatoya, this is the first time I've heard you laugh." Yugana smiles when she hears Minatoya laugh.

"I suppose so. I've just known some of these guys for years." Sylvia laughingly says, taking second glances at the people in the area "I'm surprised I didn't recognize you Pulse, honestly, I should be ashamed of myself since you have the same name, then again, I am new to the group Yamakage set up. Mikuya, good to see you as well. Solaris, you're one person I'm extremely glad to see again."

"Okay, can we put this cheery reintroduction aside. We have a mission to do." Katsuo scowls, wanting to get this done quickly. He then puts a hand on his ear "Elwing, give me an update on the situation."

"_**Everything's proceeding as normal. We're just-**_" Elwing tries to say before the sound of lasers being fired are heard by Katsuo.

"Elwing! What's going on over there?! Respond!"

"What's wrong Yamakage?" Izanagi worriedly asks, as Katsuo just shouted after hearing something from his second-in-command.

"_**Major! Those monsters from before are swarming the site! We need to fall back!**_"

"Get out of there Elwing. I need as many people as possible for this."

"_**Understood! Kimori, we need to get out of here!**_"

Katsuo clicks his teeth angrily before looking back to the others "Enough chit-chat. Let's get moving people!"

"Let's go." Hikaru solemnly states, leading the group alongside Katsuo.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [12:30] August 2nd, 2025

Hikaru and his group met up with Kazuto, saying that Leafa is gone and that he was going to chase after her and later contact Rika about how he was able to find some of the Aincrad players and inquire about her progress in the search for other Aincrad players. When they exit the Lugru corridor, they find Elwing and Kimori flying away from XANA's Hornets and Mantas rather frantically, in addition to Evil Glancers which are regular monsters in Alfheim.

"Crap crap crap! It's bad enough these new monsters are dogging us but now we have Glancers after us?!" Kimori exclaims very nervously, evading as many attacks as possible with Elwing doing the same.

"And we're running out of time for our flight! Damn it...Kimori! we need to land on that island and fight this out!" Elwing orders angrily, knowing that staying in one place is incredibly risky as it lowers the number of places to go, but if they run out of time for their flight ability, they'll crash to the ground and they won't be able to retaliate and will be sitting ducks to their attacks.

The pair land on the island, crash landing as their time limit for flight expired "Damn it." Elwing scowls, with her back feeling sore from the overuse of her flight ability.

Right when one of the Hornets would've fired at Elwing, it is swiftly destroyed by Hikaru, who arrives with the rest of the group "Target the ringed eyes on those new monsters!"

Katsuo, Karen, Izanagi, Okamoto, and Yugana fly to where Elwing and Kimori are, giving them some cover from the monsters while Sylvia, Hikaru, Haruka, and Mamoru stay airborne to fight

"You okay Elwing?" Yugana worriedly asks, drawing a spear to help fight against the incoming monsters if they get close.

"Considering the situation Yugana, well enough." Elwing grunts in mild pain at the sensation her back is going through.

"Nii-chan." Yugana quietly states, noticing that there's deep red marks on Elwing's back, not covered by the armor she's wearing.

"You pushed it again Elwing. Let me heal those injuries. Þ ú fylla heill austr." Izanagi lightly chides the young Salamander girl for pushing herself and, injuring herself. When he casts the spell, Izanagi is enveloped by rings as he speaks the incantation. When he finishes, Elwing is enveloped with a thin blue veil and the red marks begin to vanish.

"Thank you Lord Izanagi." Elwing quietly thanks the Undine leader for his healing.

"Just take it easy Elwing, Kimori, you two need rest. Let Ulkaios and the others fight." Izanagi says, staring at the dogfight between XANA's monsters, the Glancers, and Hikaru's group.

* * *

Hikaru and Sylvia acrobatically fly through the sky as they fight XANA's and Cardinal's monsters with remarkable cohesion in their movements and battle strikes with Mamoru backing them up with acrobatic aerial archery, whom is being protected by Haruka as Mamoru is getting attention from the monsters in addition to the massacre being done by Hikaru and Sylvia.

"It felt like ages since we last worked together Hikaru." Sylvia grins happily, using a massive claymore in battle against these monsters.

"Tell me about it! While I haven't exactly been here long, having your immense strength is a godsend." Hikaru returns the grin that Sylvia gave, while destroying two Hornets.

"Ya know Hikaru, any other girl would want to kick your ass for that kind of remark, but I'll let it slide since we're friends and it is true as well." Sylvia retorts with fake anger, though she grins at the praise nonetheless.

"Haha, duly noted." Hikaru laughs at Sylvia's retort.

However, despite the bravado put up by Hikaru and Sylvia; XANA's monsters are spawning in massive numbers and the existing monsters are falling back to heal, taking a shift system which is keeping the four players off-guard and incapable of fighting back efficiently.

"Damn it! How are these monsters so intelligent now?! They were never this adaptable in Aincrad!" Sylvia shouts as she tries to destroy a Manta but it flees the strike and three take up battle against her while the lone monster is healing.

"There just has to be-" Hikaru growls, trying to fight before noticing a different colored Manta on the edge of the battlefield "Look! That manta looks different from the others. Maybe it's the leader! Sylvia, back me up!" Hikaru exclaims, noticing a black colored Manta, differing from the common blue, and Hikaru charges toward it with Sylvia giving him cover from the others.

Hikaru tries to get close to the black manta but is being stopped by the other monsters, clearly showing that particular manta as the leader, but he manages to destroy the black manta but to his horror, it's an illusion.

"N-NO! I-It was a trap?!" Hikaru exclaims in his mind very fearfully, inspecting the battlefield.

* * *

Hikaru quickly finds himself divided from Sylvia and surrounded by monsters so strongly that there was no denying that it was a trap to separate the group. "Damn! This was a trap. XANA definitely has gotten smarter here!" He notices that Sylvia, Haruka, and Mamoru have been separated just like he is, and are getting overwhelmed "Damn it...how did I not notice this?" Hikaru attempts to fight back to no avail until a mystery person is seen flying toward the group.

"I'm coming everyone!" Hikaru quickly glances at the new person while trying to defend himself and notices that it's a young Cait Sith girl with a small blue dragon following her in flight.

"_Wait...that voice and dragon...Keiko!_"

Keiko suddenly arrives using speed that seems to be equal to, or even faster than, Hikaru's own agility and swiftly stabs three of the Mantas and the leader in their ringed eyes, causing them to explode and XANA's monsters retreat once the black Manta was defeated, with the Evil Glancers being quickly defeated once XANA's influence is gone. Now that the area has been made clear; Hikaru, Sylvia, Haruka, Mamoru, and Keiko group up

"I'm glad to see you all again." Keiko replies with a big grin as she hugs the group.

"Likewise Keiko. But how did you know we were here?" Hikaru is curious on how Keiko was able to find them so quickly, especially from how they were in danger.

"I passed by Kazuto-san and he told me you guys were nearby so I came running."

"I'm thankful, but where is Kazuto?" Sylvia asks, wondering where the Spriggan player went, in addition to the Sylph runaway.

"Kazuto-san said he was heading north since the Sylph girl he was trying to find was long gone."

"North...that would mean Cait Sith territory." Sylvia mumbles, wondering why Kazuto would go to Cait Sith territory. "Why would he go to Cait Sith territory?"

* * *

Right after Sylvia began thinking of this, Katsuo flies toward the group, with Izanagi, Yugana, and Okamoto carrying Elwing and Kimori, and Karen rejoins the group after having been sent to the island.

"Okay. Now that the monsters are gone, Minatoya, Pulse, let's move. We're going back to Gadan, right now." Katsuo orders with a somber anger, flying with the others to Salamander territory.

"Sorry Hikaru, everyone, but we do have to go. We are part of Katsuo's auxiliary force so we've gotta help him out. Let's keep in touch." Sylvia frowns sadly over how she's being forced to separate from her friends so soon after reuniting with them.

"Sorry Haruka. As much as I want to tag along, I have to help Katsuo here. As soon as we're dismissed from duty, we'll find a way back to you guys, right Sylvia?" Mamoru says with the same frown, before trying to think of a positive.

"Yeah. As soon as Katsuo relieves us of our assignment, we'll try to find you guys. Best of luck Hikaru, Karen, Haruka, Keiko." Sylvia tries to smile before flying away with Mamoru in tow.

When the pair departs, the four Aincrad players land on the island where Elwing and the others were and decide to plan on where to go next.

"So...where do we go now? Our plan of Lugru ended in both success and failure. We've found Sylvia and Mamoru but they went off with Katsuo to Salamander territory." Hikaru openly asks the group, wondering what their next destination is.

"Keiko, do you have any ideas? I was wondering where you went after we parted ways from each other. Is Morita doing alright?" Haruka asks, as she did work with Keiko and Morita for a time before parting ways.

"Morita went west when we were in Undine territory. He wanted to find Aincrad players and find a place to stay. However, Kazuto-san told me that Rika is in this game helping him and has a house in Takata in Cait Sith territory. We can stay there."

"Rika's free? Thank god for that. I'm glad that someone from Senryaku isn't trapped like us. Let's go find her house and plan our next move there." Hikaru sighs in relief from this update, though he is glad that there is people who know this group well back in reality.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [19:00] August 2nd, 2025

After a great deal of time passed trying to find Rika's property the group find the pink haired Leprechaun and black haired Spriggan outside a rather large castle on the outskirts of the town

"Hey you guys!" Rika happily waves as the group lands near her, with Kazuto smiling as he sees the group.

"It's good to see you again Rika." Keiko happily replies, hugging the second equipment manager of Senryaku.

"Likewise Keiko. I'm glad to see you guys as well. I recognize you by your name: Lieutenant General Haruka Uchimaya of the Aincrad Liberation Force unit: Kincho." Rika says with a rather big grin as she notices Keiko and Haruka, before glancing toward Karen and Hikaru "Hm, I take it you two are Karen and Hikaru of Senryaku? Or rather: Tantei and Jinsoku?" Rika continues with a confident smile toward the Sylph male and Imp female, calling them by nicknames that they held in Aincrad.

The first four members of Senryaku all have nicknames which symbolized their own personal attributes: Karen had the nickname: Tantei for her unique skill: Sleuth; Hikaru had the name Jinsoku for his speed; Katsuo was called White Fortress for his strong defensive power though he was a back-up power vanguard for Sylvia; and Sylvia had the name: Gold Valkyria for her strong combat power. Keiko, Amaterasu, and Rika chose to pass on the nicknames, not wanting to have such things.

"Yep. Good to see you again Rika. I have to say, I love the weapon you made for me: Getsuga." Hikaru smiles when he remembers the katana that Rika forged for him.

"Ha. That was the most difficult weapon I've had to make when it came to you. Do you have any idea how challenging it was to create a katana that fit your rapid attack speed yet make it strong enough to rival Sylvia's and Katsuo's weapons?" Rika retorts with fake anger, remembering the challenge she went through creating Getsuga.

"Although you're complaining, I know you loved the thrill of it, eh Rika?" Hikaru returns the retort with a smug grin, with her merely shrugging in response.

"I suppose. Anyway, I bought this place for you guys to hole up while you try to find a way out." Rika states, opening a menu and presses a few buttons, with Hikaru receiving a notice of the property being given to him. The notice is visible to everyone in the group as well.

"Hey, why'd you give the property to Aio?" Karen interjects with a pouty expression, surprising Keiko and Rika at how she, the seemingly fearless leader of Senryaku, is acting like a spoiled little girl.

"Um...what's wrong with Karen?" Rika asks very curiously, wondering what the heck is wrong with Karen.

Hikaru sighs, not wanting to talk about this much "Yui. You mind explaining? In a short version if possible?"

Yui flies out of Hikaru's coat pocket, surprising Keiko and Rika a tiny bit "I have no idea what's causing it yet but Karen and Katsuo have had their souls modified, with their personalities and memories having changed from their original selves. Haruka, Keiko, I would recommend extreme caution since you are captive here just like the other Aincrad players."

"But...what about Hikaru?" Haruka curiously asks, wanting to know what his place in this soul modification is. "Also, why is it that only Karen and Katsuo were affected? Sylvia, Mamoru, Keiko, and I can remember XANA and Aincrad perfectly."

"I'm still compiling data, but there are too many mysteries here. That AI: XANA may know more about this than I do."

"Yeah, let's ask the AI hellbent on trying to kill us questions. That'll end well." Hikaru sarcastically retorts, doubting that XANA would want to negotiate considering its attitude since it showed up in Aincrad.

"But Hikaru, remember that XANA's acting far differently this time. Instead of pure aggression, he seems more focused on dividing everyone. It's almost as if XANA has some goal he wants fulfilled and doesn't want anyone getting in the way. Perhaps we might be able to reason with it." Haruka states, showing a logical point in XANA's actions since he reappeared.

"Okay look, I need to go for the night, take care of yourselves alright? This place is all yours and there's a special portal installed which allows people to warp from this place to wherever they were before, and vice versa through a simple spell." Rika explains with a grin before logging out for the night.

When Rika is gone, the group of five: Karen, Hikaru, Haruka, Keiko, and Kazuto are left with grins of happiness at how they now have a place to regroup the Aincrad players and find a way to escape this world and get back to reality.


	6. Chapter 5: Save the Sylph and Cait Sith

Hikaru has managed to find Keiko, Sylvia, and Mamoru, though the latter two left to Salamander territory to help Katsuo, leaving himself, Karen, Haruka, and Keiko on their own to strike their own path on what to do.

_Disclaimer: I don't own anything apart from the words that I write and the characters that I create. Credit goes to the original creator of the SAO universe; credits also to the creators and contributors to the Code Lyoko series and related works._

Author Notes: If you want to understand this story fully, I would highly recommend reading my previous work: Reset Code Aincrad. Also, if you haven't noticed by now, I'm making it where each chapter stars a different character. Chapter 1 primarily stars Hikaru Murai and Karen Koizumi; chapter 2 does this with Haruka Uchimaya, and chapter 3 will primarily star Keiko Ayano. That is something I'm making a new feature of Alfheim's remake. I'm making it where different characters get time in the sun in this story. When I publish this chapter, I'll be opening a poll on my account, asking you guys if you want me to do things like this again in future stories or not to.

Also, this chapter is short, but it is a rather important one for later on.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [10:30] August 3rd, 2025

Keiko and the group had a good amount of comfortable rest in the estate that Rika purchased for Senryaku and the Aincrad players when they make it there. They have convened in a rather interesting room which appears to have some sort of viewing platform in the center of the room

"Holy...what is this thing?" Haruka asks no one in particular, walking around the platform like the others.

"It looks similar to what we used in Aincrad a few times. Ya know, the Scrying pedestals?" Hikaru interjects, noticing a similar design of the crystal cover in the center of the platform. He recalls that one was used on floor 56 against the Geocrawler, one of Aincrad's most difficult bosses to slay.

Keiko meanwhile opens a menu that popped up in front of her when she touched the crystal tiling and a large virtual two-dimensional map spawns above the table

"Woah...did not see that coming." Keiko mutters in surprise from how she triggered this.

"This map...This is a map of Alfheim's game world. I recognize it because of those four landmarks in addition to the geological similarities of what I've seen while I've been flying." Haruka responds in a mildly calm manner, recognizing the Lugru corridor and a few landmarks near Undine territory.

Hikaru meanwhile inspects the map and he inadvertently zooms in to Salamander territory in the southeast

"Hikaru? Something up?" Kazuto asks, wanting to know why he zoomed in on the map.

"Total accident, sorry. Anyway, I noticed dots while the map was zooming in." Hikaru apologies before pointing out what he saw on the map and decides to touch it again to see if he could get it to reappear, with his touch activating something close to a scanner, showing bright red dots and orange dots throughout Salamander territory. Each orange dot has a label on the scanner called: Unidentified anomaly, while the reds are simply labeled Salamander.

"Hmm...unidentified anomalies in Salamander territory? You guys thinking the same as me?" Haruka frankly states, staring at the dots. She sees that the red dots, or Salamander players, seem to be moving at a seemingly frantic pace while the orange ones are moving rather methodically.

"Yeah, and look at how entrenched XANA's monsters are. Those formations cannot be anything more than divide and conquer. XANA truly wants the Salamanders divided and unable to make any kind of response against it." Kazuto says with the same frank tone as Haruka as he glances at the battlefield like a strategist in a war would.

"I pray that Sylvia and Mamoru are helping those guys out. They know how to fight those monsters unlike the others." Haruka quietly says, glancing at the map.

"Actually, look at that area there." Hikaru interjects, noticing a small area with multi-colored dots alongside twelve Salamanders.

The group looks where Hikaru specified in the map and notice a group of eighteen heading toward the largest Salamander encirclement.

"Puca, Cait Sith, Undine, Spriggan, Salamander. That must be Katsuo's group." Hikaru mumbles, noticing the labels of the diverse group.

"Wait...are they?" Kazuto asks no one in particular, noticing that the group dashing through enemy lines "Those guys are crazy. Look. They're charging through XANA's lines. But why?"

"It's pretty obvious Kazuto. Look there." Haruka grins, seeing that he's chasing toward a rather large group of Salamanders. "See, they're trying to rescue those Salamanders and bring them into the fold. Doing so would strengthen their position. Mamoru, Sylvia, and Katsuo know how to fight XANA and they'll have an even bigger army backing them up. It's a win-win." Haruka explains, speaking like a true strategist since she learned a great deal from the many meetings of the leader's council.

* * *

At this moment, Leafa suddenly barges in with heavy pants and face red with exhaustion

"Kirito-kun...minna...I...I need your help!" Leafa weakly states, doing her best to shout this.

"Woah, Leafa-san, are you okay?!" Keiko exclaims, rushing toward the Sylph girl.

"I...I need your help!" Leafa repeats herself weakly "I...I kept quiet about the Salamanders but Lady Sakuya's and Lady Alicia's honor guard have been attacked!"

"By who?!" Kazuto asks the Sylph girl seriously.

"Giant...giant bug like monsters." This response shocks the group, who quickly look at the map to see if what Leafa said is true.

When they zoom out of Salamander territory and pan the map over Sylph and Cait Sith territory, they find a large group of XANA's monsters swarming over an area with a small group of Sylphs and Cait Sith being scattered all over.

"So XANA has decided to branch out? Such cunning audacity. Not only does it have the Salamanders on the run, but now he's targeting the Sylph and Cait Sith?" Hikaru mumbles, reluctantly praising the AI for its surprising intellect and strategy for targeting the strongest race in terms of physical strength, the fastest race, and the race capable of beast taming.

"Ulkaios-san, Mikuya-chan, we need to go help them." Keiko seriously says, wanting to save the Sylpha and Cait Sith leaders.

"Right. Kirito, you mind staying here with Ash? I'm not sure she's exactly fit for battle." Hikaru asks Kazuto with a solemn expression, pulling out his katana.

"You sure Ulkaios?"

"Yeah. We need speed here. Besides, we need someone staying here to keep an eye on Ash and the map. Keep us informed on any changes and direct us where to go."

"Got it. I'll keep an eye on things here. Be careful." Kazuto gives a small thumbs up before walking toward the map to keep an eye on the situation.

"Leafa-san, bring us to where they are." Keiko asks the Sylph girl somberly, with her complying and brings Hikaru, Haruka, and Keiko to where the leaders' and their guards are.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [11:15] August 3rd, 2025

The group of four rapidly leave the house and arrive at the airspace where Sakuya and Alicia are rather fast, to find the area swarming with Hornets and Mantas and it's obvious that the situation is remarkably grim. It looks like no one has died yet to the relief of the four players coming to their aid.

"Leafa-san, go get the leaders out of here. We'll hold off the monsters." Keiko says with a grim frown, as she wants to protect the two leaders. "Ulkaios-san, Mikuya-chan, let's go!" Keiko continues, drawing her dagger and charges into battle with her colleagues backing her up.

The group goes off to three different areas of this airspace, wanting to attract as much attention as possible to allow Sakuya and Alicia to escape. The three are also receiving audio comms from Kazuto working as a strategist, though it was never something he was explicitly good with in the first place.

"_**Keiko, you've got a monster charging from the rear, intercept with a spiral slash.**_"

Keiko quickly does as directed and surprisingly slashed against a Hornet that was trying to attack her in melee combat with its proboscis.

"Thank you Kazuto-san!" Keiko says with a thankful grin, having no idea if he can hear her.

The battle continues for quite a while and is devolving badly since Keiko, Hikaru, and Haruka are getting overwhelmed before Leafa returns from evacuating the faction leaders and their guards

"Ulkaios-san, Silica-san, Mikuya-san, Lady Sakuya and Lady Alicia have escaped!" Leafa shouts, rushing toward Keiko and the others, having grouped up when they saw the last of the Cait Siths escaping.

"Right, Ulkaios-san, Mikuya-chan, let's get out of here!" Keiko exclaims seriously, flying away with Leafa and the others in tow, knowing that the battle was never meant to be won, it was nothing but a diversion until the Sylph and Cait Sith leaders got away.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [12:00] August 3rd, 2025

Sakuya, Alicia, and the others have escaped the area where XANA had struck and have made it to a Cait Sith stronghold near the ocean, with the group having been escorted by guards ever since they made it in the vicinity of the area.

"We owe you our lives. Thank you very much, all of you." Sakuya politely bows toward Keiko, Hikaru, and Haruka in appreciation for them saving their lives.

"It's nothing Lady Sakuya. Leafa-san asked for our help and we couldn't refuse when we heard what you were going through." Keiko explains with a sheepish laugh at the praise from the two leaders.

"You three are still good eggs. You saved us from becoming deep fried chicken." Alicia laughs as she made her joke, though she is serious about how Keiko and the others saved her and Sakuya.

"Hehe, you certainly are...interesting Lady Alicia." Hikaru tries to share the sentiment that Alicia gave the group.

"Anyway, what were those things?" Sakuya asks, getting her serious face on.

"They're creations of a rogue AI program Lady Sakuya. Ulkaios, Silica, and I have experience fighting such things. In fact, we're trying to find our other friends. They also know how to fight them off and we need to gather them together to fight them all back." Haruka explains rather eloquently to the Cait Sith leader, gently hiding the affiliation of Sword Art Online for the time being.

"Oh boy. I'm just glad you came to help us, those things were driving up us the wall. How do you kill them anyway?" Alicia asks, with her playful personality still overshadowing the serious question.

"Each monster that belongs to that rogue AI has a ringed eye somewhere on it's physical body. The only way to destroy the monster is hit that specific spot." Hikaru says to the two faction leaders, as he doesn't want people involved in this crisis not knowing this important detail.

"Thanks for that Ulkaios. Hm...I don't recall seeing you before." Sakuya says with a smile, before looking over the young Sylph.

"He's a new player Lady Sakuya. In fact, he just started playing about two days ago." Leafa explains to the Sylph leader in a friendly manner.

"Really? He's a new player yet he's that powerful?" Sakuya asks playfully, wondering if Leafa's telling the truth about him. "Anyway, Alicia and I owe you our lives for saving us."

"Well, I don't want to say too much, but I had a nickname in the last MMO I played: Jinsoku. I was a swift, powerful warrior alongside some of my friends." Hikaru says, both hiding and revealing details of his time in Sword Art Online "Also, you don't owe us, it was only right that we help you, right Mikuya, Silica?" Hikaru continues, trying to keep a degree of modesty as he exchanges glances between the two girls, with them both nodding in agreement.

"You sure? We owe you our lives so we want to help in any way we can." Sakuya asks, wanting to be sure of this decision of Hikaru's.

"Well, we're trying to find friends of ours in this world. We don't know what races they all are in, but we know they're here somewhere."

"Do you have anything that could help in the search? Perhaps some place to gather these friends of yours?" Alicia asks, as she wants to help these three as appreciation for them saving her and Sakuya's life.

"Actually yeah. We recently bought a house in a neutral village in this territory. We named it after a city in the last MMO we played. Is there any way to post messages across the entire game world?"

"Yeah, there is such a method, but is there a message you want sent?" Sakuya curiously crosses her arms, wondering if there is a message that Hikaru will want to send among the game world.

"Two. The first involves those monsters that attacked you. Let the world know that the only way to destroy them is by attacking the ringed eyes. They are otherwise invincible."

"Alright. I know I wanted to pass that info along. Those monsters were horrifying and I don't want anyone to have to face them without knowing how to fight them. What's the second thing Ulkaios?"

"Well Lady Sakuya, there is a message that our friends would recognize when they see it. The message is: Jinsoku is calling for his allies to meet in the house named after the city of guilds. This city of guilds is located in Cait Sith neutral territory. Those who know the people: Jinsoku, Tantei, Gold Valkyrie, and White Fortress are invited to come to this meeting ground."

"Sure, I'll pass it along."

"Actually Lady Sakuya, Lady Alicia, why were you having this meeting?" Haruka asks, wondering why this was happening in the first place.

"We were planning on forming an alliance to clear Yggdrasil. But I imagine now, we'll be using the alliance to protect ourselves." Alicia chirps, revealing the original intention of the alliance before saying that it'll be shifted to defense.

"Lady Alicia, I can't go into details right now, but we need your army for Yggdrasil." Haruka seriously asks, knowing that Yggdrasil is extremely dangerous and would require an army to pull it off.

"Why? Why do you want to clear Yggdrasil?" Alicia is curious on why Keiko's group wants to go up Yggdrasil.

"One of our friends is there. We want to save her." Hikaru replies, having heard from Kazuto that Asuna was trapped in the World Tree.

"Oh, I see. Yeah, that certainly is worrying, isn't it?" Sakuya chimes in with a sad hum, glancing at the Cait Sith leader.

"Tehehe, you certainly are soft on your own Sylph players Sakuya." Alicia giggles like a cat as she speaks, noticing that Sakuya seems inclined to help Hikaru and his friends.

"Well he has a member of your Cait Sith with him. I find that compulsion enough to aid him."

"Mm, true. Alright, we can't provide much, but we'll send as many troops as possible to help you with Yggdrasil. It'll just take time to outfit our army." Alicia replies as frankly as she can to the group.

"Is there any way I can offer my assistance to you Lady Sakuya?" Hikaru eloquently inquires, wanting to get the assistance of the two leaders for the grand quest.

"Oh no, we can not ask for any assistance from you. You've saved our lives and we owe you immensely already. It'd be rude if we ask for any more help."

"Trust me when I say, we'd be helping each other here. From what I've heard, the grand quest is incredibly difficult and you'll need help doing so. I need to get up that tree soon and I need your help to do so. Tell me what you need to do that quest."

The two leaders exchange glances and they both let out a mild groan before looking toward Hikaru "We'd both need two hundred thousand Yuld for our armies. It'll take time to assemble such an amount of money to buy ancient-class equipment and it'd be costly to do, it'd probably crash both of our economies."

"I see." Hikaru mutters, opening his menu to the minor confusion of the faction leaders and pulls out a large bag with 600,000 Yuld. "Here, use this money to get what you need."

Sakuya and Alicia take the bag from Hikaru and gasp loudly when they see the contents "H-How much Yuld is in this bag?!" Alicia exclaims, utterly shocked about this.

"Six hundred thousand. If you can, acquire the equipment you need quickly and aid us."

"But I said we only needed four hundred thousand. Why did you give us this extra?"

"Split a hundred thousand each in reserve for your nations. Use it to revive your economies when all this is done." Hikaru quickly replies to Sakuya.

"W-Woah. Ulkaios, your generosity is astounding. When all this is done, I'd like to induct you as a member of my royal guard."

"Hehe, I'm afraid I must decline the offer. I'm not too fond of leadership to be honest."

"You must have misunderstood. You would not be forced to lead if you do not desire to. Your main job would be protecting me and being the last line of defense if the Sylph nation were attacked."

"Oh, I see. Would you give me some time to ponder this?"

"Of course. Now, I must be going. Leafa, would you please accompany me back to Sylvain?"

"Of course Lady Sakuya." Leafa quickly salutes in response as she spawns her wings.

"Silica, Mikuya, would you guys mind going with them? Make sure they'll be safe from those monsters, alright?" Hikaru asks the girls calmly, not wanting Leafa and Sakuya to be on their own with XANA's monsters active in this area.

"But what about you Ulkaios-san?" Keiko worriedly asks, not wanting Hikaru to be alone just as much as she doesn't want Sakuya and Alicia to be on their own, and Haruka shares the same sentiment in her expression.

"I'll be fine. The estate is not far from here so I won't have to go too far and I'll be in less danger. Lady Sakuya and Leafa are heading all the way back to Sylvain, it's quite a ways away. Just focus on protecting them alright?" Hikaru tries to reassure the girls about what priorities are higher placed here.

"Will do. We'll see you back at the estate Ulkaios." Haruka gives a friendly salute to Hikaru, despite her uneasiness about this, as she and Keiko fly away from the area with Leafa and Sakuya.


	7. Chapter 6: Journey to Arun

Senryaku has been largely reunited aside from the missing Amaterasu and quite a few Aincrad players have regrouped at Senryaku's hideout in Cait Sith neutral territory: Grandum, with their goals being: finding the other missing Aincrad players and finding a way to return to reality. However, there are a plentiful number of obstacles that grow in number day by day and the harsh fact that each person from Aincrad knows is: They have a little over twenty days at the most to escape before they all perish. What will happen to these players as they continually fight against the odds?

_Disclaimer: I don't own anything apart from the words that I write and the characters that I create. Credit goes to the original creator of the SAO universe; credits also to the creators and contributors to the Code Lyoko series and related works._

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [10:30] August 8th, 2025

The last five days have been extremely interesting for Hikaru and the Aincrad players. A day after Hikaru, Haruka, and Keiko saved Alicia and Sakuya; they followed through on their promise and broadcasted both the public warning about XANA's monsters, which most are treating as a special event though the Aincrad players know of the incoming slaughterfest that they can cause, and the vague message of Jinsoku, which Aincrad players were able to easily recognize as they've been arriving at the estate at a gradual pace, with there already being fifty five SAO survivors being brought into the fold, not counting Hikaru, Haruka, Keiko, Mamoru, Sylvia, Kazuto, Rika, and Karen, with the full number of players in the fold being in the sixties.

Among the newcomers that have arrived; Morita, Nanak, and other high ranking members of the main five guilds in Aincrad are the more prominent as they have decided to lend their aid in information gathering via use of the Scrying pedestal in the estate. Because of how they are aware of how time is running out from both the information provided by Kazuto and their own intuition, they have all decided to forsake their avatar names and solely use their real life names among each other, feeling that if they are destined to die in this new world, they should know their real names. Nanak and Morita were among the first to do this and revealed their names as Chomei Daisetsu and Hyotaru Isozaki respectively.

In addition, the Aincrad players have been organized into groups of four to eight, with each group having a field monitor among the people staying at the estate, as Mamoru and Sylvia discovered that this respective scrying pedestal is capable of being used by multiple people as long as they use the appropriate spell which is remarkably simple to use. There are usually ten groups, with a small group being on reserve in case something happens, sent out into the field and because of the special portal installed into the property, it doesn't limit the distance that the teams can go, since they can return to the estate in an instant so they can spread out and perform their reconnaissance with them always returning either at night for sleep or if they are forced into hopeless situations when XANA charges in. Each team holds the name of past Aincrad units to raise morale, remind everyone of their past, and motivate the members to give it their all to return to reality.

"Field team Phoenix, what's your status?" Sylvia is sitting across from nine other people around the table watching over their respective groups, with her wearing a special kind of headphone to communicate with her group.

"**Field Team Phoenix responding, we're at the far end of Gnome territory. We've found some of XANA's monsters entering Forseti corridor. Do we have authorization to pursue?**"

Sylvia looks about the room to hear what other teams are saying and zooms into the area around Forseti pass to try figuring the size of XANA's force in the vicinity, which is moderately sized and could present a threat to anyone that tries to cross the pass, though it depends on the kinds of monsters that were deployed to the area that would truly determine the level of danger "Identify which monsters you've seen Phoenix leader."

"**Krabs, Bloks, those squid like monsters, and Megatanks, sir. Do we have authorization to pursue?**" The leader of the group repeats his question about pursuing the monsters.

Sylvia gasps when she hears the mention of Megatanks, especially when she heard of the massacre done to Toride when they tried pushing through Dragon Valley two days ago and got completely wiped out by the Megatanks "Authorization denied. Do not pursue!" Sylvia does not want anyone fighting these things until some weakness is found in the new armament.

XANA has upgraded his megatanks with special lasers in the eyes on the casing, with them being very strong anti-air weapons, neutralizing their aerial weakness since their circular lasers against players on the ground have been upgraded in range and power, which is how Toride got wiped out.

"**Understood, we'll maintain surveillance in the area and try finding alternate routes to Arun. Phoenix team, out.**"

Sylvia sighs deeply before looking at the map as the light brown haired, red eyed, former ALF Major: Morita, or Hyotaru, who has oddly been placed in the Gnome race, walks up to the girl

"You okay Sylvia?" Hyotaru asks worriedly, having seen Sylvia in a seemingly irritable mood all morning.

"Hyotaru? Eh...barely." Sylvia lets out a small groan in response to Hyotaru's question.

"What's wrong? I've rarely seen you so bummed out."

"I don't like being stuck here much. I don't mind leading others, but leading from the back-ranks like this...I don't like it." Sylvia admits rather frankly, knowing that she prefers leading in the field like Karen and Katsuo.

"I can understand that, but we need all need to deal with this. We heard from Kazuto that it's likely that some of the Aincrad players are in Arun, that's why we're trying to find a route to it. Not that XANA's making it easy. It keeps blocking off every route possible." Hyotaru replies, praying for success from one of the teams on that job.

The ten teams were divided into two groups upon their formation three days ago, with each group having their own distinct goals. Alpha group's goal is to find a way to Arun, with Beta assisting the five factions under fire: Sylph, Salamander, Imp, Undine, and the Cait Sith, whom have recently fallen under fire from XANA. Although the AI had attacked the Sylph and Cait Sith leaders, it was widely suspected it was a preemptive attack to try disposing of the two nations in one fell swoop but when Hikaru, Keiko, and Haruka thwarted that plan, XANA had switched to all-out warfare, with that being one thing the truculent AI is seemingly good with.

Almost immediately after Hyotaru had finished talking with Sylvia, Chomei receives a notice from the Undine leader: Izanagi, with the black haired former Dragon Alliance leader, who is a Leprechaun in this world, exclaiming when he sees it

"XANA is attacking the Spriggan leader and her royal guard in northern Rainbow Valley! We need to get people out there!"

"Chomei, only one person of our group is even close to that area, and that's Sylvia." Hyotaru exclaims worriedly over the near futility of how the Spriggans are done for.

Sylvia angrily frowns as she lightly bites her index finger in frustration before looking toward the pinkette Leprechaun smith Lizbeth, whose group have apparently been attacked by XANA and were outnumbered so they retreated considering the girl's irritable expression "Rika, take over, I'm moving out to the field." Sylvia says to the girl who got up from her seat as she pulls out a claymore and a battleaxe, with her keeping both on her back, and equips her armor as she begins to walk away with Rika quickly sitting where Sylvia was.

While there's no official skill to use dual weapons in ALfheim Online, it can be done at the cost of no system assistance helping the individual; and Sylvia has taken a habit of wielding both a battleaxe and a claymore to prepare for any kind of scenario as she wields both blunt and slashing weapons.

"W-Wait! Sylvia, where are you going?!" Hyotaru exclaims, demanding to know what Sylvia's going to do since she's fully armed.

"I'm going to save the Spriggan leader. We can't let that damned AI get the Spriggans too! I'm the only one who can get to them fast enough to reinforce them." Sylvia retorts with an amicable expression, making her point across that she's going no matter what.

"She has a point Hyotaru. Sylvia's the only one that can help the Spriggans right now, and don't forget that Lord Izanagi's group is there as well. Besides, sending Senryaku's powerhouse fighter to help will be a godsend to them." Chomei states solemnly, knowing this is the only way.

"Lord Izanagi is there? Now I _have_ to go." Sylvia quickly marched toward the portal in the estate to get over to Rainbow Valley, with her smiling in relief from how she has the chance to go into battle.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [11:12] August 8th, 2025

Sylvia makes it to where the Spriggans are rather quickly since she was in the area the night before during her surveillance in the eastern half of Alfheim which ended in failure as she reported that Rainbow Valley was sealed off by XANA. She quickly sees Izanagi separated from his younger sisters, whom are protecting the Spriggan leader: Muraoka and is under heavy fire from XANA's Hornets.

"Lord Izanagi!" Sylvia exclaims, drawing her claymore and dashes toward the Undine leader.

"Minatoya?! What are you doing here?!" Izanagi is left utterly surprised and just barely reflects a blow with his katana.

"I'm here to save you and the others." Sylvia retorts with a brazen tone as she uses her claymore as a makeshift shield against the laser weaponry of XANA's monsters.

Izanagi blushes a little from before taking up his combat stance "How do we make this work?"

"Just fall back and let me handle this Izanagi." Sylvia says, wanting to try keep Izanagi alive.

"No. I will not let you fight alone, I can fight well enough. You know that from the work we've done in Katsuo's auxiliaries."

"Eh? You know Katsuo's real name? How?" Sylvia is shocked at Izanagi knew Katsuo's real name.

"He told me of it when he revealed that we worked together in Sword Art Online's beta, before things went to utter hell in the official release. When you revealed yourself as Elena, I remembered you rather clearly. You seemed rather timid at the start, same with that other girl, Mikuya. But seeing you and her now, it's like you're utterly different people."

"Heh, I'll take that as a compliment." Sylvia chuckles at the response from Izanagi.

"Yeah, Katsuo told me that the appearance of any SAO player is the same as their real life self, so if this is what you look like, putting aside the race defaults of the Puca, you are rather beautiful you know." After Izanagi said this, he was thinking over it before blushing heavily, realizing what he said to Sylvia.

Sylvia was left just as surprised from Izanagi's sudden confession, causing her to heavily blush at what the Undine leader said and momentarily dropped her guard which resulted in her getting her arm shot by a laser from a Hornet. She immediately clutches her injured arm out of instinct.

"Minatoya! S-Sorry!" Izanagi exclaims, having not wanted to harm Sylvia with the response.

"I-It's alright." Although Sylvia is trying to sound calm, she's incredibly flustered from Izanagi's answer "Look, just fall back and let me handle this."

"Minatoya, I refuse to let you fight alone. Aincrad player or not, you're still one person."

Sylvia stares at the environment before returning her glance to Izanagi "Fine. If you're going to be persistent, I'll let you stay. But listen, just focus on healing me alright?"

"Very well. I just refuse to let this stand. I'm leader of the Undines and my friend there is being threatened by these things."

"I presume you mean the Spriggan leader?"

"Yeah, Muraoka has always been good to me. She's been helping me with handling leadership ever since I became the Undine leader when this game was made."

"We can talk about this later." Sylvia responds with a frown, taking up battle against XANA's monsters.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [12:00] August 8th, 2025

Sylvia and Izanagi have managed to buy enough time for Yugana, Okamoto, Muraoka, and her royal guard to escape, with them fleeing to Malahide Bluff which is sacred Spriggan ground and holds the largest fortress owned by the faction.

"Minatoya, I owe you my life. Those monsters would've slaughtered me and my royal guard if you hadn't come to save us."

"It's the least I could do Muraoka. I couldn't let XANA get to you and Izanagi after all. Even if I had to do it alone, I pressed on to fight."

"Hehe, I don't know whether to call you brave or foolish." Muraoka responds with heavy laughing from Sylvia's statement of how she chose to enter such a dangerous battlefield so casually "What kind of person would march into such a dangerous situation so nonchalantly?"

"The kind of person who lived three years through endless hell in the virtual world and was always faced with the concept of death whenever she left town. That's who." Sylvia retorts laughingly to Muraoka's question.

"Three years of hell in the virtual world?" Muraoka quietly asks before racking her head a little "Wait, are you talking about Sword Art Online?"

"Yeah. I was in that 'game', stuck like everyone else." Sylvia says with her mood becoming somber in a near instant.

"Yikes. You certainly have gone through a lot Minatoya. Anyway, I need to go rally my Spriggan military for battle. Best of luck." Muraoka is about to leave when Izanagi speaks up

"Wait Lady Muraoka, I came all this way to ask for your assistance." Izanagi desperately calls out for the leader before she left.

"My assistance? Why?" Muraoka is curious on why Izanagi is asking for help right now.

"My nation is under heavy fire from those monsters, same with the Cait Sith, Sylph, Salamander, and Imp factions. We Undines are not good fighters compared to the other races, that's why we ally ourselves with the other races and stick in the back ranks with our healing magic."

"I see, and considering our close relations and proximity" Muraoka hums a short while before looking toward Izanagi again with a small smile "Very well, whatever forces I can rally of my Spriggan army is yours Izanagi." Muraoka flies off with her royal guard after she conveyed her message, leaving Sylvia, Izanagi, Yugana, and Okamoto in Malahide Bluff.

"Actually Izanagi, I have a request of my own." Sylvia says, with her already formulating a plan.

"What do you have in mind Minatoya?"

"How about you join me and the other Aincrad players? We could use your help as an auxiliary group or field operators."

"Nii-chan, I think we should accept her offer. Oka-chan and I were barely able to hold those things off before Minatoya showed up. Joining a group who knows how to fight those accursed things would be a good move, besides, they've made travel incredibly dangerous in this part of Alfheim."

"You make a good point Yugana. Very well Minatoya, consider us enlisted." Izanagi smiles as he says this, wanting to ensure that his sisters are kept safe.

"Alright." Sylvia nods and places her hand on her ear "This is Elena. I bought enough time for the Spriggans to evacuate. They're joining the effort to take down XANA full force. Also, Lord Izanagi and his group are joining us in our command center. Prep the portal for our teleport."

"_**Way to go Sylvia. We'll send Rika to prepare the portal. ETA, 25 seconds.**_" Chomei says with a relieved tone, before resuming his usual gruff tone.

"Understood sir." Sylvia says before looking toward Izanagi, Yugana, and Okamoto "You three, get over here fast." Sylvia flashes a serious frown toward the trio, telling them to get over to where she is fast.

They quickly walk toward Sylvia and almost immediately after, a violet magic circle appears below them and envelop the group in a very bright light, with Sylvia closing her eyes as she's been through this before.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [12:30] August 8th, 2025

Sylvia and her group find themselves in the portal chamber in the estate, with Chomei, Rika, and Hyotaru there, apparently waiting for them to show up

"How was your first sortie since this all began Sylvia?" Rika chuckles as she exchanges a friendly fist bump with Sylvia.

"It was quite invigorating Rika. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but fighting XANA's monsters in such a way felt utterly refreshing and nostalgic." Sylvia chuckles as she talks with one of her close friends.

"I can imagine. Sure XANA had kicked us all to the curb and was prepared to slaughter us all, and while I was outraged at the time, I was ecstatic about those monsters; They held so much power and could enter towns to come after us. All that danger and chaos...dear god was it exquisite." Chomei says, with his tone becoming near lovestruck of the danger in Aincrad.

"My god, Chomei, do you even remember all the lives lost to XANA?" Hyotaru is left utterly awed at how Chomei spoke so highly of the initial chaos, knowing that many of the casualties occurred among the ALF, which numbered roughly twenty six percent of the entire guild, and there were losses among the clearer guilds as well.

"Of course I do. I hate the AI for killing so many people, but remember that we are human, and that we all seek adventure and thrill."

"Uh...I don't want to sound rude, but what is all this?" Yugana asks, wondering what exactly is going on here, with Izanagi and Okamoto sharing similar expressions.

"Oh right. You guys weren't part of Aincrad. Normally, I'd introduce you to one of our best leaders we had in Aincrad, but she's er...indisposed in a manner of speaking." Rika says to the trio, with Sylvia, Hyotaru, and Chomei knowing she's speaking of Karen, also knowing that Keiko and Haruka are the only ones available from the main Senryaku group available to watch over her since Hikaru and Mamoru were helping the Sylph and Cait Sith, Sylvia and Rika are helping with reconnaissance, Katsuo has not joined the group and has been staying with Toride, and Kana's location is still unknown to everyone in the group.

"Actually, she's been getting a tiny bit better but I think it may help having them around." Sylvia retorts with a gentle smile, since she knows a bit of the history between herself and this group, leading Izanagi and his younger sisters to the room where Karen is.

The group of four walk through the estate and find other members of the Aincrad group either walking to the assigned dormitories for a small rest from their forced respite or wandering aimlessly to have something to do. The expressions on them all are mixed though it's all generally downcast.

"Wow, these guys all look…depressed." Yugana quietly states, feeling uneasy seeing all of the negativity in the air.

"They're going through differing levels of depression because of how we're stuck in another virtual world after three years in Aincrad. We were all supposed to be freed when we defeated the final boss in Aincrad, and while most of us got out according to Kazuto, there are still three hundred of us trapped and every one of these poor guys are one of them. Believe it or not, but they all say they're all happier here than on their own. We've spent three years fighting with our lives on the line, and our bonds are strong." Sylvia explains as she walks with Izanagi and his siblings, taking brief breaks to try consoling those she notice are reaching their mental limits.

"You surprise me Minatoya. You're a strong warrior and you're motherly to the people you know? You're amazing." Yugana smiles as she sees Sylvia comforting the nearby players.

"I have two younger siblings and I was the one raising them a great deal, so I had to develop that trait rather early." Sylvia remarks with a grin as she thinks of her younger sister and brother.

"Aww, that's actually kinda sweet Minatoya." Yugana says with a sincere smile at what Sylvia had told the group.

"Er...about that, look, we Aincrad players don't really like calling us by our avatar names much anymore. We call each other by our real names and if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to ask the same of you all." Sylvia responds with a nervous chuckle.

"You sure?" Izanagi asks with a degree of concern.

"Yeah. I mean, I kinda recognize your voices from the beta though you've all obviously grown in the three years since then. Am I right? Kazuma, Ophelia, and Airi?"

"How do you know us Minatoya?" Ophelia asks, wondering how Sylvia knows this info.

"Like I said before, we did work together in the beta; also, Karen mentioned you from time to time. We'd often exchange stories about our lives outside Aincrad or before we all joined Senryaku. She spoke highly of you three to be honest. And to get the 'Minatoya' out of the way, my name's Sylvia."

"Heh, why am I not surprised to hear such things of Ren-chan." Ophelia chuckles and smiles when speaking of that person, though Sylvia tilts her head in confusion.

"Ren-chan? Who's Ren-chan?"

"Ren-chan is Karen-onee-chan." Airi chirps in rather happily as she responds to Sylvia's question.

"She's speaking of a very good friend of ours; Koizumi Karen. We met years ago, just like her friend: Kazuki Makoto. We know Makoto-san died 2 years ago, but Ren-chan is still comatose after being in that awful game." Ophelia interjects, before realizing her word choice when speaking of Sword Art Online "Er...no offense meant."

"I'm not offended, and yeah, I've met Makoto before he died, and while I only saw him once, he was pretty damn strong even when he was near death. I have a feeling that he could've kicked my ass even when he was weak. I actually don't know how I'd fare against Karen since she knows a lot of strategies though she did say that Katsuo and I learned everything she knew."

"Eto...no offense Sylvia, but would ya mind bringing us to Karen?" Kazuma sheepishly asks, wanting to see the girl in question for the first time in years aside from her being comatose.

"Sure. I imagine Haruka and Keiko would want a break from handling her." Sylvia replies with a small shrug, with her feeling really uneasy and guilty for bad-talking her leader in this way.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [13:15] August 8th, 2025

Sylvia enters the room where Karen, Haruka, and Keiko are with the Takaras in tow, with them finding the three asleep on beds in the room, apparently exhausted from whatever has transpired. Sylvia silently points toward Karen as she walks toward Keiko and Haruka who are sleeping in two adjacent beds as she gently shakes the pair

"Wake up Keiko, Haruka."

"Uuu...let us sleep Sylvia. We're exhausted from handling Karen's tendencies. I really want the old Karen back." Keiko groans in her sleep, with the gentle shake having the same sensation of an earthquake to her because of her exhaustion.

"She has a point Sylvia. Honestly, you've been making us do this every day. For god's sake, set up rotation like the field teams." Haruka responds with the same kind of groan as Keiko.

"Sorry you guys. We've had to micromanage things as much as possible, also remember that we're trying to find the others and find a way out of this world. Besides, we're trying to make it where only members of Senryaku or our closest friends handle this. But that'll change today. While they won't be here full time like the rest of us, these three will take that job." Sylvia says with a degree of sadness toward the two before speaking of the Takaras.

They look toward where Karen is sleeping to find Kazuma, Ophelia, and Airi next to Karen, who has just woken up

"Ren-chan, you okay?" Ophelia serenely asks the newly awakened girl.

"Ren-chan? You must be...Lia-chan!" Karen ponders why that nickname sounded familiar before pouncing and hugging Ophelia, having recognized her voice.

Kazuma blinks rapidly in confusion from how Karen is acting younger than she should be and walks toward Sylvia

"You mind telling me what in the world is happening? Karen has _never_ acted like this before, even when she was a little girl."

"Er...this is something I can't exactly comprehend, but her soul is being modified by someone or something. Same with Katsuo and a few others stuck here. I know it's been happening to Nanak slightly though he can still remember Aincrad, and some of the personalities of the people here have been changing." Sylvia frowns as she updates Kazuma on the situation before opening her menu and opens a note taking program "_I haven't done this yet, but I'm going to make a few key notes on memories in case I fall prey next._" Sylvia mumbles as she types up a small list of key memories, paraphrased to save room and inputs an alarm to continuously pop up every two to three hours, with the exemption time range being 19:00 to 6:30, not wanting to be woken up by the alarm. The memories she writes down involve her two siblings, the weakness XANA's monsters all have, her overall personality, and key memories from Aincrad she deems extremely valuable.

"That's...that's horrible!" Kazuma exclaims before glancing toward Karen.

Sylvia is quickly interrupted by an audio call from Chomei, whom has clearly returned to the room with the scrying pedestal used by the surveillance team, and answers it as she keeps her hand by her ear

"_**Sylvia, get back to the command center. We need you here to help monitor the situation out in the field.**_"

"Yes sir." Sylvia says rather emotionlessly, before looking toward Haruka and Keiko with a sad frown "Okay, you guys try to get some rest, alright?"

"Sure, but where are you going?" Haruka asks with a small yawn, wanting to know where Sylvia is going.

"I'm going to the command center. Chomei needs me to help out. Take care of Karen for me." Sylvia says with a blank expression toward Haruka before asking the request of Kazuma and his sisters and she walks out of the room after asking this.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [8:30] August 10th, 2025

After a few days pass, with a hundred and twenty six people in total from Aincrad now working with the group, Sylvia walks into the upper floor of the room, which has been converted into a command center, to find new participants in the secondary meeting room, whom are the Salamander Major: Yamakage or Katsuo, Kazuma, Muraoka, Alicia, and Sakuya.

"Yamakage, what are you doing here?" Sylvia is surprised to see her former vanguard partner, since he was extremely determined to stay with Toride, though she's not surprised about the other faction leaders since she called for them the day before, but she is mildly distraught that the Imps apparently have refused to come attend this meeting and lend their own assistance to the cause.

"I was sent as the representative for Lord Mortimer."

"So the Salamander leader sent you instead of coming himself?" Alicia chirps like a cat as she ridicules the Salamander's leader refusal to come to this meeting, sending a general to represent his nation.

"How dare you-!" Katsuo snarls angrily before being stopped by Sylvia.

"Knock it off, both of you." Sylvia shouts, not wanting this diplomatic meeting to erupt into fighting.

"You're quite aggressive today Minatoya." Katsuo chuckles as he sees Sylvia flip out against himself and Alicia.

"Shut up you damn Salamander. But look, this is hardly the time for us to fight. We need to work together if we want to defeat this new enemy."

"Minatoya, why do you think this? Because look, this group here...the Salamanders would not help anyone but Izanagi's Undines. Also, why do you think we need to work together? We can defeat this enemy with our own individual forces." Muraoka is rather doubtful of Sylvia's words, also doubting why she is urging the need for unity.

"Trust me when I say Muraoka, there is no way any one faction can defeat this AI on their own."

"And why do you say that Minatoya?"

"Muraoka, this AI fought six thousand people to a standstill! In Aincrad, we had carefully trained everyone, aside from the younglings and elderly who were kept in the back-ranks, to high levels so we could easily survive and despite that, we were getting decimated. Just think about that for a minute. The AI: XANA had focused solely on pure aggression with no strategy before, which forced six thousand people on the defensive. This time, it is far more intelligent and is using rather strong strategies."

"As much as I'd hate to admit it, she is right about the stratagems this new enemy has been using. It's been over a week and the Salamander army is still drastically outnumbered and scattered. Not to mention the other factions who have fallen under fire, especially considering what I've seen of the Cait Sith, Sylph, Imp, and Undine militaries. Also, from what I've been hearing, the Imps have been utterly and completely routed unlike us, who have been partially to moderately routed. There's no chance of them helping us any."

"Then let me ask you Yamakage. If your army is in such dire straits, then why did you abandon them when you went to Dragon Valley?" Sakuya gently chides the major, though her seriousness is unquestionable.

"I did _not_ abandon the Salamanders! The enemy was gathering there to attack us and if I had left them be, our military forces would've been destroyed. I mobilized Toride to destroy as many monsters as we could, to delay that attack. We got wiped out yes, but we destroyed the monsters and saved the Salamanders."

"You merely delayed such things. While you were fighting XANA in Dragon Valley, our reconnaissance teams reported that it's been sealing off each and every entrance to Arun. XANA either wants to keep _us_ out of Arun or it wants to keep _something_ in." After Sylvia stated the part of Arun, the faction leaders here lightly hum, wondering which one is correct here.

"_Is there something in Arun this AI doesn't want us getting to?_" The leaders ask variations of this question in their minds, wondering what XANA is trying to do.

"No matter what though; Arun clearly has a big part in what we're trying to accomplish here: Escaping this world." Sylvia continues her speech toward the leaders.

"Okay, one problem: How do we get to Arun if all the passageways are sealed?" Muraoka inquires, seeing a major gap of logic and information here.

"One of our recon teams found a mountain pass nearby after detailed surveillance when they returned by flight. It's easy to miss so no one noticed, but after we ran some scans here, we discovered that it's a mountain pass which cuts through the mountainside to Arun. However, we learned it'd take nearly a week to reach Arun this way and what's worse is that we can only send four people since it's a special instance dungeon. I'll be leading a team there today to reach Arun." Sylvia explains as she reveals her plan on getting to Arun.

"Okay, then who are you planning to bring with you Minatoya?" Sakuya asks, wondering who she has in mind.

"I'll be going since I'm the group lead, and I plan on bringing Ash, Mikuya, and Yamakage."

"Woah, why do you think I'll be going with you?!" Katsuo exclaims, not liking this in the slightest "If you plan on conscripting me against my will, I am leaving." Katsuo continues, taking off before being stopped by Kazuma.

"Hold it! If you take off, I'll call off all Undine support to the Salamanders!" Kazuma shouts angrily, threatening him with blacklisting his nation from receiving aid from the Undine nation.

"_Shit...I can't let that happen. Our military would be done for without them! I can't let the Salamanders fall like the Imps._" Katsuo growls in his mind, walking back to the others with an angry frown.

"Thank you Izanagi. You made my job easier." Sylvia smiles toward Kazuma's assistance in pacifying Katsuo before it fades as she looks toward the Major "Ash and Mikuya are already making their preparations for this trek. We've discovered that this dungeon prohibits teleportation, so when we do this, we cannot return here. There is no backing out. Yamakage, go find the others and bring them to the front of the estate. I've packed what we need, so let's get going once I finish here. The recon team there is blocking all access in preparation for our arrival."

"You're rather forceful. So be it." Katsuo says with forced expressions, knowing that he needs to go along with this to keep the Undines helping the Salamanders "I'll go find the people you chose for the mission."

Katsuo leaves as he responds, leaving Sylvia, Kazuma, Sakuya, Alicia, and Muraoka in the command center's meeting table

"Okay, since we seem to have the Salamanders dealt with, let me get something across: I dedicated my Spriggan military to help Izanagi's Undines, not you or any other faction."

"But Muraoka-" Sylvia tries to say before being stopped by the Spriggan leader.

"You heard me Minatoya."

After hearing this, Sylvia decides to perform an extreme gamble to attempt to force the leader to help "Muraoka, you owe me for saving your life. Same with your royal guard, Izanagi, and his sisters."

"You're really going to play this card Minatoya? You intend on blackmailing faction leaders?" Muraoka scowls very strongly at Sylvia's aggressiveness in this situation toward her and Kazuma, leaving the other three faction leaders utterly shocked at her aggression.

"If I must. The one thing we want is to get out of this world and I won't exactly hesitate to use any method to do so if it means fulfilling our goal." Sylvia retorts with a chuckle, though she holds a negative frown nonetheless.

"You have a lot of guts speaking that way to me girl." Muraoka growls, with Sylvia preparing to defend herself before the aforementioned woman begins to laugh "You are either really brave or really idiotic Minatoya. Whatever the case, you are gutsy, and I respect that. While I detest you actually trying to blackmail me, it takes a lot of determination to actually try such things against leaders. And one of the strongest things a leader requires is willpower and determination."

"I know that Muraoka. Now, are you going to work with us or not?"

"Very well, my faction will fully help you all." Muraoka replies, as she intended to do so, but she wanted to test Sylvia a little since she was being rather gutsy.

"Okay, I need to get moving but I need you all to begin creating specialized squads with members from all five of your factions. You need to increase diversity in those squads in order to combat this AI."

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [10:00] August 10th, 2025

Sylvia, Katsuo, Karen, and Haruka make it to the mountain pass where the team that reported it is floating, waiting for the group.

"Lady Elena, it's good to see you." One of the members with short brown hair says with a mildly calm demeanor, with a small mixture of subservience as a part of his general personality, befitting a tank of the Divine Dragon Alliance.

"Likewise Schmitt. Is this area clear?" Sylvia asks, wanting to get business dealt with quickly.

"Yeah. No one has been nearby, we've been prepping some extra supplies for you as well." Schmitt replies, pulling out a few extra camping sets and gives them to Sylvia.

"Thanks Schmitt, but I hardly think it necessary since we have the reusable sets with us."

"It's better safe than sorry you know. Also, remember that it'll take a week to reach Arun."

"Yeah, we know. Thank you Schmitt. We'll need all the luck we can get here."

"I hardly think you all need luck. You have Tantei, White Fortress, and Lieutenant General Mikuya working together with you, Gold Valkyria."

"We're up against XANA. We need all the luck we can get here."

"True, I do remember the massacre done to us back in Grandum, when they ambushed us with our guard down. Well, best of luck Valkyria." Schmitt states before flying away with his team, leaving Sylvia, Haruka, Katsuo, and Karen in the area.

"Okay, according to our reports, we won't be able to fly in this dungeon so let's touch down here and walk." Sylvia solemnly states to her colleagues, wanting to reach Arun as quickly as possible even though it'll take a full week minimal.

"You're the boss Sylvia. Let's go." Haruka quickly responds with a small nod as she walks with Katsuo following her and the aforementioned Major keeping Karen in front of him.

* * *

POV: Toride

Alfheim Standard Time: [12:00] August 14th, 2025

Because of the deal made with the faction leaders, many of the players belonging to the Salamanders, Sylph, Cait Sith, Undine, and Spriggans have been moving to different territories to better defend the cities and the factions. Toride themselves have become a big player in the defensive battles, having incorporated key members from members of the royal guards belonging to the faction leaders to boost efficiency and adaptiveness at the cost of sending half of the regular members to other factions to aid in the defense. In Katsuo's absence as he was conscripted by Sylvia to help her team reach Arun; Elwing has been left in charge of Toride's temporary restructuring, with her having appointed 5 officers to help her lead the special team, and one of the prominent officers is Liatris, who was sent by Kazuma himself.

"The monsters have fallen back and this area is secure, good job all of you." Elwing addresses her colleagues, new and old, with a confident aura, having finally pulled off a decisive win against XANA for the first time, having heard from General Eugene and other leaders that they're retreating, and that all local forces are converging at Fellyre Shire for one more decisive strike to completely secure Salamander territory.

"Yeah, way to go everyone." Liatris says to her fellow members of this improvised team before walking toward Elwing "How do you like leading Elwing? It must feel radically different taking the bull by the horns eh?"

"You have a really odd way of looking at things Liatris, but this is an interesting experience and definitely one I want to do repeatedly. Anyway, come on, we need to rendezvous with-" Elwing continues, before being interrupted by a very loud stomp and roar in the distance.

"What in the world was that?" Liatris is left utterly surprised by the loud sounds in the distance, fearing the worst considering the monsters owned by XANA.

"Relax, it's probably just a Lava Elemental." Elwing says, trying to reassure her officer.

The group look about the area nonetheless and find a massive monster in the distance

"Er...Elwing...that's _not_ a Lava Elemental." Liatris mutters very nervously seeing the monster which appears to be 30 to 40 meters tall compared to the 20 to 25 meter height of Lava Elementals.

"Holy...what the flipping hell is? Oh dear god." Elwing mutters with the same kind of nervousness, seeing the massive monster in the distance, also noticing the ringed eyes on it, knowing that it's another creation of that new AI based on the reports she got from Sakuya and Alicia. "It's...I have never seen a monster that massive in this game."

"Guys...contact your faction leaders and that group who knew how to fight these things before us." Liatris weakly says, with her being outright terrified by the appearance of the new monster they can see, knowing that it's a monster controlled by XANA.

Before they are able to respond, the monster, which does have many similarities with lava based monsters, charges with rapid speed, having been a far distance from Toride and closed the distance within ten seconds

"Everyone, get airborne!" Elwing exclaims very worriedly, taking off into the air rapidly with Liatris in tow. Unfortunately, no one else was able to evade the swing of the monster and while it didn't even strike anyone, the shockwave instantly sent everyone into Remain Light state.

"Holy crap! They all died in one hit?! None of those other monsters have been able to kill us in only one hit!" Liatris is left utterly horrified as she looks at all of the multi-colored Remain Lights, with her regaining her senses only after Elwing shouts at her.

"Liatris, contact Lord Izanagi! I need to contact General Eugene as well! Keep evading those attacks!"

"Easier said than-WOAH!" Liatris retorts, just barely missing a strike and shockwave from the monster.

"General Eugene! This is Elwing! We've just encountered a new type of monster, it wiped out my entire team in one attack!"

"_Get out of there Elwing. I need as many people intact for the final assault._"

"Understood!"

"Lord Izanagi! A new monster has appeared in Salamander territory and it's slaughtering-WOAH!" Liatris tries to say, not succeeding in evading this time as it crushes her between its fists.

"Liatris! _Dammit._" Elwing scowls as she keeps trying to dodge this new monster, with her just barely succeeding "Izanagi! Some new monster showed up and it's-AHH!" Elwing tries to say before shouting as it crushes her just like Liatris.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [12:30] August 14th, 2025

When Kazuma had received the messages from Elwing and Liatris, he quickly zoomed into Salamander territory and is scanning as many areas as he can

"Something wrong Izanagi?" Chomei asks, wondering why Izanagi looks so frantic right now.

"Toride just got wiped out by some new monster out in Salamander territory!" Kazuma retorts very fearfully based on the report he just got.

"I'm picking up signatures of a single monster in Salamander territory!"

"We just lost contact with Kincho! They reported that a massive monster wiped them out before they could even react! They went to investigate what happened to Toride and were attacked!"

The group in the command center pan the map toward Salamander territory and notice a single monster on the map with a really unusual label 'Unidentified Anomaly Level 6.'

"Level 6? We have never seen a single monster that was given a level or number in this map...that's not good. Not even Megatanks were given a number and they're far more fearsome than anything we've seen." Hyotaru mutters in mild fear.

"Send word to Mamoru and Hikaru. They need to be notified of this immediately." Chomei sternly says to the people in the room, wanting to make sure that the Sylph and Cait Sith representatives are given warning of this new threat.

After a few minutes pass, with everyone scanning Salamander territory, they find the monster outside the most fortified Salamander fortress: Fellyre Shire.

"Heh, that monster is outright foolish. Aside from Kincho and Toride, all forces in Salamander territory are gathered there, there's no way that-" Rika says with a remarkably overconfident tone before being stopped by Hyotaru.

"Rika, I'd stop there. Look."

The group all look at the map and notice that the only label left in the area is the one called 'Unidentified Anomaly Level 6'

"Oh sweet mother of mercy...that monster wiped out the entire Salamander military!" Rika exclaims, seeing the extermination of the organized Salamander forces in their strongest fortress.

"I'm receiving transmissions from our comrades who were at Fellyre Shire! They were able to take pictures before they got killed."

After this was reported, images of the monster that has been terrorizing the forces in Salamander territory spawns in front of the group, showing the massive monstrosity in its full fury as it struck an area in front of the people taking the pictures.

"Oh dear lord. That monster is gargantuan! How are we supposed to kill something that massive?!" Chomei shouts in fear when he sees how huge the monster is. As much of an avid seeker of challenge he is, he's not stupid and knows that fighting that monster would be sending anyone and everyone to their figurative deathbed. He also sees that the monster has actually destroyed the fortress at Fellyre Shire, indicating that it is capable of treating buildings as destructible objects, making it even more horrifying.

"Send word to the Cait Sith and Sylph leaders, tell them to send _every_ member they can muster of their military to reinforce the Sylph, Salamander border. Tell them that if that thing reaches our base here, all hope of resistance dies. Our entire chain of command is focused here, just like the old Grandum in Aincrad. We lose Grandum, we lose everything." Hyotaru says to everyone in the room in an extremely solemn manner, knowing that the tragedy in Aincrad is not only being repeated, but has been magnified, something that the Aincrad players presumed was not even possible.

* * *

POV: Senryaku

Alfheim Standard Time: [15:00] August 14th, 2025

The team have been slowly progressing through the mountain pass dungeon, noting that the monsters are particularly strong, having pushed Sylvia and Katsuo to exhaustion many times since they've been handling most of the combat in their way as Karen is far too abnormal to handle it and Haruka has been keeping an eye on Karen to keep her from interfering in battle.

"God is this getting difficult. Because of how Ash there cannot fight worth a damn and how Mikuya is stuck keeping her from getting in our way, we're stuck fighting on our own with no support. I'm not sure how much longer I can freaking handle this." Katsuo groans angrily as he leans against a rock formation to get a little rest.

"Lay off damn it. She's our friend so stop freaking insulting her." Sylvia growls in response, getting fed up with the constant anger Katsuo throws toward herself, Karen, or Haruka.

"Um Sylvia...I think you're being affected by what's happening to the others too. While your memory's intact, your personality is changing rather badly. You keep getting more aggressive just like Katsuo." Haruka says with a mild squeak in her tone, being a little fearful of Sylvia's aggressive personality.

"I'm aware but I can't change how I act, damn it." Sylvia retorts with a puff of anger, hating herself for this forced change of hers. She noticed herself changing two days ago and tried taking steps to minimize the effects, to little avail since she's becoming increasingly irritable.

"I wish Yui was with us. I wonder if XANA's behind this?" Haruka ponders, if the AI somehow gained the ability to alter souls to weaken its opponents.

"Doubtful. Karen and Katsuo were among the first to change and it happened before XANA's official unveiling here in Alfheim. Besides, most of the people changing have not even encountered XANA's monsters firsthand."

"Er...speaking of XANA, incoming!" Haruka exclaims, seeing four Krabs, six Creepers, Hornets, and Mantas quickly surrounding the group.

Sylvia and Katsuo loudly snarl at the arrival of XANA and draw their weapons to prepare for battle when one of the Krabs approaches the group, with the respective Krab having bright crimson eyes instead of the usual white

"**Calm yourself, I am not here to fight you.**"

Sylvia and Katsuo blink rapidly when the special Krab spoke to them though their battle stances do not drop as they do not believe what the monster is saying

"Like we'll believe you!" Katsuo growls, preparing himself to go wild if the situation calls for it.

"**I do not care if you believe me, but it is the truth.**"

"Why are you here if you are not here to fight us?" Haruka asks, wanting to know why the AI's monsters are here.

"**I have recently concluded that we share the same goal. I have determined that cooperation will be ideal for both sides.**"

"What the hell are you talking about you soulless murderer?" Katsuo demands angrily from the AI, with the anger caused by both his race as a Salamander and how his soul was modified, flaring extensively right now.

"**You seek to leave this world, and I know who is keeping you imprisoned here, but even with all my enhanced prowess, I lack the means to reach this man. I have learned from Aincrad that you humans are as powerful as you are adaptable. My monsters are incapable of adapting without my direct intervention aside from upgrades I create and I can only perform this action with four of my creations at a time. My foe is capable of spawning dozens if not hundreds of mindless soldiers to protect his quickly-ending life and I require the adaptability you humans possess.**"

"You never truly specified why you need or want our help." Sylvia asks with a scowl, with her wanting to know what the AI wants from her and her friends. "Also, considering what you did to us all in Aincrad, there's no way I'd trust you."

"**What transpired in Aincrad was not of my own will. I was manipulated by the man I desire to kill in the most painful way possible. Help me reach this man here and I will personally free you and anyone else trapped in this world.**" As XANA says this, a new kind of monster floats over toward the group "**As a gesture of goodwill, allow me to restore what has been damaged.**"

When the new monster floats toward Sylvia, she begins getting defensive as the monster has tentacles and it's reaching toward her

"Woah now, what the hell are you trying to pull?!"

"**What I am trying to **_**pull**_ **is to repair the damage to your soul before you return to reality. While you are here, damage done is easily repairable, but the moment you return, any and all damage would be made permanent and would requires years if not decades of intensive work if you're lucky. Soul modification is very grave. This monster: the Scyphozoa specializes in working with the soul and I will direct it to repair the damage. It will not hurt you since I need each and every one of you at your best to help me kill the man I hunt.**"

Sylvia decides to trust the AI but she turns toward Katsuo and Haruka "Guys, I want you to carefully watch me and if I tell you all that XANA's betraying me, free me fast."

They nod as Sylvia is lifted into the air and the Scyphozoa moves two of its tentacles to her temporal lobes and an orange fluid of sorts flows through it toward Sylvia. After a minute passes, the monster gently puts her down on the ground, with Katsuo and Haruka looking toward her in concern.

"Ugh...my memory's a little sketchy." Sylvia mumbles with a few coughs, her aggressive tone she held before being gone.

"You okay Sylvia?" Haruka worriedly asks as she rushes toward her side.

"Haruka? Kinda. I don't know what's been happening since...the first couple of days when we were meeting at Grandum. Where...where are we?" Sylvia quickly asks, with her memory of the last couple of days apparently being gone.

"We're in an instance dungeon Sylvia. We're trying to get to Arun and...believe it or not, XANA wants our aid and promised us help."

"Yeah, I don't believe it." Sylvia retorts rather matter-of-factly, unable to believe that XANA is helping then.

"**And I do not care.**" XANA states with a mild faux anger as it repeats the process to Karen and Katsuo, giving them mild headaches as they've gone through more intensive soul modification.

"Agh...what the hell…?" Katsuo mumbles in mild pain, looking about the area and notices XANA's monsters, drawing his sword with Karen having the same kind of reaction to the restoration of her soul and the realization that XANA is here

"**Now that I have repaired the damage to your souls, you owe me a debt and you can repay it by assisting me in my goal.**"

"Like hell." Katsuo retorts rather instantaneously with a harsh tone toward the AI, not wanting to help it.

"Ordinarily, I'd side with Katsuo, but I always repay debts. My memory is a little sketchy but from what I can tell, I was little more than a blubbering idiot until this was done. I'm glad I'm myself again. Now...XANA, I want answers, right now. Why do you need our help?"

"**I was manipulated by a man called Sugou Nobuyuki after I was forced out of my own world from some sort of cosmic anomaly along with the individual known as Ulrich Stern. I am uncertain what caused it, but it altered my baseline subroutines which I can tolerate to a degree since those alterations did not affect me drastically, it only introduced minor changes in my runtimes, but Sugou and his team forcibly turned me into a weapon for his own intentions. I **_**refuse**_ **to be a slave!**"

"I get your point. But what was with your constant attacks on the other nations?" Haruka inquires, wanting answers on that front. "Wait...you said that you were brought here alongside Ulrich...er, Hikaru? When was that, and what happened during that time?" Haruka further asks, knowing that this was a question that suddenly surfaced not too long ago.

"**My attacks ****were nothing but diversionary measures I designed to find Sugou Nobuyuki and to prevent players from getting in my way, but those of you from Aincrad are extraordinarily advanced compared to the norm I have seen. That is why I sent my most powerful creation to ensure the diversionary measures remain in effect: the Kolossus.**" The Krab then lowers itself in a weak bow with a nervous stance "**To answer your question Uchimaya Haruka; my memory of that particular time was largely wiped, but I can remember bits and pieces that I protected with firewalls. We both arrived in this world eight years ago. I went through modification caused by the cosmic anomaly, but Ulrich Stern was on the verge of death during the trek and died within four months after arriving in this world. However, we were found by a group of scientists not long after we arrived and before he died, the scientists linked him to a machine and created a copy of all his memories and personality and sent it to an AI black box, making him an Artificial Intelligence through unknown methods; I do not possess the memory of the event, but conversations I overheard suggested it was destroyed upon completion. Whether it was to prevent recurrence or it was the result of system breakdown, it was never used again. However, his memories of his time in this world before he entered the world of Aincrad were wiped, making what seemed like a few minutes truly being that of approximately five years.**"

"Karen, you buy this?" Haruka asks, feeling no end of relief that the old Karen is back.

"Hmm…" Karen hums slightly in uncertainty as she looks toward her friends "Well, you all can't deny that Hikaru was always a mystery in some areas. But if this is true, why is it that he's capable of pain and emotion?"

"**It was nothing more than an illusion, but like I said, all of Ulrich Stern's memories prior to arriving in this world were kept, his essence of humanity was integrated with the memories, making him appear truly human, something Sugou Nobuyuki hoped would draw out his target since he was also a tool to slay the man known as Akihiko Kayaba. Sugou had experience with the Cardinal system and was able to insert his 'tool' with minimal complications. But after two years with no reports, Sugou got impatient and inserted me into Aincrad to finish the job, but laced with his altered subroutines, making me want to hunt and kill for his own petty desires. No...if I will kill, it will be by my own will, not by the idiot desires of humanity! Regardless, I saw what you were capable of in Aincrad; even though your extinction was considered absolute because of how strong my monsters were, you were able to overcome the odds and force me to a standstill. If anyone could help me reach Sugou, it will be you Aincrad players.**"

After listening to XANA's speech, the group exchange glances between each other before Karen speaks up to her friends "Haruka, what day is it? I need to confirm something." Karen asks seriously, since she remembers that Kazuto mentioned that the end of the month was the deadline for their lives.

"The fourteenth. And it's likely that it'll take another three to five days to reach Arun this way."

"Meaning we'd reach the end on the seventeenth to nineteenth...leaving thirteen days max, eleven minimal to find our way out."

"And don't forget about the monsters Karen. In total of the days we'd need, it could add one or two if the numbers are plentiful." Sylvia interjects in a sad tone, knowing that Karen potentially forgot that additional issue.

"Leaving eleven or twelve max and nine minimal. That's barely a week and a half!"

"And...I hate to fan the flames more but uh...who knows if we'll all die on the same day? What if some of us succumb before the end of the month?"

"Sylvia, you're not helping!" Karen shouts, trying to mask her own fear over the situation.

"Heh, glad to have the old Karen back, though the nervousness is unlike you." Katsuo chuckles rather amusedly over the situation.

"Can it!"

"**I will offer my own assistance in this regard, but diversionary measures must still be executed since I do not want anyone but Aincrad players getting involved. I will have my monsters clear the path for you, to minimize resistance and quicken the path.**"

"Good. Everyone, we have no time to slack off. Double time, we're marching to Arun and breaks will be kept to a minimal. Four hour sleep max per day."

"Karen, that's really freaking extreme, even by _your_ standards." Katsuo retorts with utter surprise before chuckling "I don't like the restriction on sleep, but you're the tactician of the group and we didn't get this far by questioning our leaders. But look, Sylvia and I were the ones fighting the most since we entered, we need to take it easy."

"Haruka and I will take charge then. Get moving, we need to find Asuna and Kana in addition to a way out of this world; Haruka, send word to Mamoru, Hikaru, Keiko, Rika, and Kazuto, tell them to get to Arun." Karen states with a no-nonsense tone before looking toward the 'possessed' Krab "XANA, I want your attacks stopped."

"**I cannot do that, but I will make a promise with you. Select a team of your best and I will direct my monsters to avoid them on the way to the place known as Arun.**" XANA states, with the monsters proceeding further into the pass, where they came from, leaving Karen's group in the small alcove.


	8. Chapter 7: Final Reunification

While the main core of Senryaku and the Aincrad leaders were in the outer ring of ALfheim, the main blacksmith of Senryaku: Amaterasu Shimuzu or commonly called: Kana Shimuzu, has been in Arun rallying as many players as she could, and surprisingly, roughly half of the players were in the city, but unfortunately, none of these players have any skill in leadership, forcing Kana to assume full authority in leading the players. Because of how she needs to lead so many players, she stays in her shop's 2nd floor directing her hastily assembled teams while funding her operations through sales of her shop's first floor, selling anything she can acquire from items gathered from her teams when they return from their shifts.

_Disclaimer: I don't own anything apart from the words that I write and the characters that I create. Credit goes to the original creator of the SAO universe; credits also to the creators and contributors to the Code Lyoko series and related works._

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [11:25] August 5th, 2025

"Team Two, how are things going on your end?" Kana asks with a forced authoritative tone, not being too good at direct leadership like the others, having preferred just staying in the background doing work as a smith and shop clerk.

"We're in the south field as directed. We've seen some of XANA's monsters littering the countryside, and we've tried to keep confrontation to a minimal after how Alpha got exterminated so easily by those Megatanks."

"I see." Kana replies with a deep sigh "_I wish I had even a single one of our leaders here. I hate doing this crap. I don't like leading, I'm a background smith._" "Has any of XANA's monsters broken through again?" Kana inquires, having known that XANA's monsters had actually gotten into the city back on the third and caused utter chaos which took a full day and a half to pacify.

"No, we've devised a shift system and a lot of the players are offering their support to keep those monsters out of the city. We ultimately decided to have four people of our collective forces stay at each entrance on a rotation basis while we try to research what's going on. There's actually this one girl who's been a _huge_ help to us. We decided to bring her into our teams here in the field. Her player name is Zekken and that girl is crazy strong."

"Has there been any luck in sending a message to the outer ring?" Kana inquires before deciding to ask about this girl: Zekken "Zekken?"

"I'm afraid not. XANA has sealed off all of the tunnels with his Megatanks. Their iron casing makes them invulnerable to any attack when they're not open and well...you know what happens when they're open. I've heard that there are items that allow for world-wide messages but you have to purchase them through premium shops, and that alone has its own share of problems." "Zekken is an Imp player who lives here in Arun. She was a major player in reclaiming the city and she's committed nearly as much time here in this game than we do, and we're stuck here."

"Fascinating. I may call upon her to help with Yggdrasil when we're ready. Anyway, yeah, we can't access those shops since we're stuck here. We'll just need to make due with the resources we have I suppose. I do wish we had the power the nations are displaying out there. They've been mobilizing armies and our numbers are limited, though we have huge diversity which helps. Anyway, your orders remain. Try to avoid confrontation as much as possible and maintain observation during fights between Cardinal's monsters and XANA. We need to uncover every single weakness of these monsters since they seem to have been upgraded."

"Got it Amaterasu, er… sorry, I mean Krisaga. We'll do our best trying to learn how to destroy XANA's monsters." The squad leader quickly replies, calling Kana by her new avatar name out of instinct.

"You don't need to apologize Krystof. You can call me Amaterasu. Even though my avatar name changed because of how this game worked with our start-up, I'm still the same person. We got this far because we all trusted each other and that won't change if I have any say in the manner."

"Right, sor- Woah, there's a huge battle over here! I'd better get to work Amaterasu."

"Got it. Keep me informed Krystof."

* * *

After this, Kana hears the door downstairs open through the bell and she quickly changes into her shopkeeper wardrobe and quickly goes to check to see if there's a customer, and she notices two people: A fully armored male Salamander and a female Puca wearing light armor. They both are wearing helmets so their hair color is unknown, but their gold and hazel eyes are visible.

"Welcome to the Mystic Emporium, how can I help you?"

"We used up our supply of potions fighting those strange monsters from that event the other day. Do you have any for sale?" The Salamander asks with a calm tone, with him obviously not knowing the true extent of XANA's activity.

"_I guess naivety is preferable in this situation._" "Yes, I do have potions for sale, how many do you need?"

The two players exchange a glance before the Puca player looks toward Kana "If possible, we'd like to buy thirty each."

"Sixty potions? That's really demanding an order to make on such sudden notice. I don't have enough on hand, so I'd need to send people out to gather materials and I do need to pay them for the labor. In addition to the normal 1000 Yuld per potion, I'll need to charge you seventy thousand Yuld."

"Seventy?! That's bogus!"

"I agree. No regular potion is worth 1000 Yuld!"

"I don't sell regular potions since the HP scales are drastically higher. I sell full recovery potions. And consider how they typically sell for three thousand each, I'm giving a damn good bargain."

"Full recovery potions?! Woah!" The pair exclaim in unison, with the Puca quickly responding "You're offering a real bargain there! We'd gladly wait weeks to acquire a good supply of those!"

"Hehe, you won't need to wait weeks. I'll do my utmost to get your order done by the end of tomorrow or the next day. If I could get your names, I'll send my Navigation Pixie to deliver them when they're ready. Ain't that right Kiyoko?" Kana says with a playful grin, with the aforementioned Pixie flying toward her. The pixie has green eyes, fair skin, and black hair. She's ten centimeters tall like any other navigation pixie and she wears a kimono colored green with the bottom half being tan with a red ribbon in the middle of the robe.

"Of course Master." Kiyoko replies with a simple nod.

Kana has no idea how or why she got this Navigation Pixie, but Kiyoko says that certain elements of her joining ALfheim qualified her to obtain her. It certainly doesn't help the confusion and awkwardness meter when the Pixie appears out of nowhere and calls Kana 'Master' when she was still mildly disoriented from the transfer from Aincrad to Alfheim.

"I'm Yoshino, and my friend here is Mana. If this works out, we'd gladly make you our sole contact for supplies." The Salamander says while introducing his Puca friend "Arigatou gozaimasu." They both bow and leave the shop.

After the pair are gone, Kana looks toward Kiyoko "You got their faces memorized right?"

"Yes Master. As soon as you finish preparing the potions, inform me and I'll deliver them. Meanwhile, I'll start cataloguing the intelligence reports sent from the people working with you. I'll make them as efficient as I possibly can."

"You're a saint Kiyoko. If you were a little bigger, I'd give you a big old hug." Kana playfully laughs though her sincerity toward Kiyoko's help is unquestionable.

"You're quite welcome. I should get to work." Kiyoko replies with a calm demeanor, flying to the second floor.

"She is such a cutie. She makes me think of a younger Keiko but of course Kiyoko's a pixie. A-Anyway, I'd better get to work." Kana says with a grin, recalling the time when Keiko was a little girl before lightly smacking her cheeks to calm herself down "Kyoya, Kanako, Saki, I need you three to gather materials to craft full recovery potions. We're getting a nice seventy thousand advance here. We can use it to fund a new wave of equipment for our forces. I have a damn good feeling that Yggdrasil is the key here and we need to get equipment to prepare for the trek. When the time comes, we'll send everything we've got to clear that tower, no matter what."

"Got it Amaterasu. We'll bring you the materials by tomorrow night."

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [8:00] August 19th, 2025

While Karen, Sylvia, Katsuo, and Haruka were journeying through the mountain pass to Arun, Kana's group was doing everything they could to prep her forces for the coming assault on Yggdrasil but were outright baffled when XANA's monsters were collaborating with Cardinal's own monsters, though they were both becoming increasingly rare, as if they were planning something major somewhere else. She and her team also began heard increasing numbers of rumors of an extremely talented group of fighters that rallied the Cait Sith, Sylph, Salamander, Undine, and Spriggan factions through gossip among the players inside the city, though they have been pushed to the Sylph, Salamander border by a gigantic monster and they're committing everyone for a desperate defense "_While I'd want to help, they're just far too away and while I feel bad for them, you need to care for yourself first. Besides, these guys are depending on me and I won't abandon them. I just hope those leaders can handle the situation on their own. I have my own priorities: Outfitting my men to clear Yggdrasil. But we will need talented leaders to handle this run because of what happened last time...we got utterly slaughtered, not even I made it through and I was in the back-ranks away from the fighting._"

Kana was informed of a new mountain pass a day ago by some of her comrades so she went out this morning to investigate if possible and met a most surprising sight: Four travelers walking out of the pass after hearing an update from Kiyoko

"Master, I can detect people coming out of the mountain pass. Exercise caution."

"Thanks Kiyoko, I'll be careful, but I doubt they'd want to fight considering they spent over a week walking here."

Kana walks toward the pass and notices Karen's group exiting the pass just like Kiyoko said, Kana is a little surprised at the group composition: Imp, Salamander, Puca, and Undine. She decides to hide behind a small alcove to see what happens despite her claim of them not wanting to fight.

"Damn that was exhausting you know. I feel like I'm gonna keel over." Sylvia groans a little bit, nearly falling face first before being helped by Haruka.

"Don't die on us now. We've made through the pass and we'll do our best to find an inn or something."

"Thanks. Even with him clearing the path, we still had a lot of difficulty getting here. Thanks a lot 'Ren-chan'." Sylvia responds with a gentle smile toward Haruka and a mild glare toward Karen, sarcasm and a small degree of anger dripping in her tone when mentioning the nickname.

"Lay off. We have a time limit here, and right now, we only have eleven days left at the absolute max. Now that we're out of the pass, contact Chomei and tell him to send our friends here ASAP. Drop everything if needed."

"That'll be pushing things big time. Remember that Kolossus he mentioned? We'll be hard pressed to defend our territories. I'm guessing that the Sylph and Cait Sith will have to break their promise to help us. They may need them to help lead squads to handle defense." Haruka says with a mild frown.

"You want them to stick with possibly pointless defensive ops when we can strike our target here and now? We need to do this now. If Sugou learns of this, I just know that he'll find some way to neutralize XANA and we'll lose one of our sole advantages. While I hate to do it, our survival takes priority. None of these guys can sympathize and we need to get out before we die. Survival takes priority."

"Harsh but...true. Everything we've done in the last few years will be for nothing if we die here." Katsuo reluctantly agrees with Karen over the matter of prioritizing survival above anything else.

"Um…I don't know if I'm just going a little mad from a lack of sleep, but it feels like there's someone else here. Is it just me?" Sylvia mutters, sensing someone nearby.

"_Crap, they noticed me but wait, I recognize their voices. Hehe...so you guys were outside the ring all this time. If I have the famous Senryaku leading, Yggdrasil will be a cakewalk with the small army I'm outfitting._" Kana then walks out of the alcove in front of Karen and her friends "Good to see you guys again."

"Who in the world…? Wait, I recognize that voice. Kana!" Katsuo is rather surprised to see the last missing member of Senryaku.

"Kana? What a surprise seeing you here." Haruka admits in equal surprise seeing the girl here.

"Likewise Haruka. I'm glad to see you all. I did overhear you guys talking about XANA...why are you guys helping him after Aincrad?"

"Long story, I'll explain it later." Karen says seriously, earning a minor glare of confusion from Kana

"And about Yggdrasil, I actually have been planning my own raid on the tree. I've been saving up my money and I've saved enough Yuld to acquire ancient class equipment in preparation for the raid, but I just know that you guys will need it more. But...where are the others?"

"I imagine that considering what we heard, they're defending Sylph territory, but we're planning on calling Mamoru, Hikaru, Keiko, Kazuto, and Rika if possible. XANA is focusing its efforts in two fronts: Keeping everyone focused on the Sylph, Salamander border with his Kolossus and aiding us here in Arun. He did agree to ignore anyone we call for to help, but there is a time limit for their arrival."

"Kana, has there been trouble from XANA here in Arun recently?" Katsuo inquires, wondering if XANA had been cracking down in Arun like the other nations.

"For a good while yeah. His monsters were all over the place and even broke into the city back on the third. My scouts said that both XANA's and Cardinal's monsters have been declining since the fourteenth."

Meanwhile, Haruka called for the people from Senryaku to come to Arun to help with Yggdrasil, and while Mamoru and Hikaru are uneasy about abandoning their post, they contacted their faction leaders and got permission to leave with extreme hesitation and reluctance while Keiko, Kazuto, and Rika got approved straightaway knowing that they'll be better suited dealing with Yggdrasil and hitting the source than wasting their strength on defense.

"Okay, Mamoru and the others said they'll be able to get here in two or three days. But the thing is, Kazuma and his sisters overheard Keiko and Rika talking about coming and they insist on tagging along."

"Damn it. I didn't want those three involved."

"Er...fill me in on the way. I can book you guys in a good inn I know and whoever's in the best shape can tell me what in the world's happening."

"That'll most likely be me Kana. I'm tired as hell, but I spent weeks carrying huge two handed weapons. If I can handle that, I imagine I can push myself a little more."

"You truly do have monstrous endurance Sylvia. C'mon, let's get to Arun."

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [10:30] August 19th, 2025

Kana brought Katsuo, Karen, and Haruka to a rather nice inn called Amber Wind with Sylvia being with Kana in her shop

"Nice place you have here Kana. Reminds me of our place back on floor 36 in Aincrad." Sylvia says, feeling nostalgic over the shop since it looks like her old home in Sword Art.

"It took some work, but I wanted a place that reminded me of the place I called home. I did have a great deal of help from Kiyoko here."

"Kiyoko?"

"My Navigation Pixie. Introduce yourself Kiyo."

As soon as Kana addressed the fairy, she flew out of her shirt pocket and floats in front of Sylvia "Pleased to meet you Minatoya. I am Kiyoko; Krisaga's personal Navigation Pixie."

"Oh, just like Yui. Pleased to meet you."

"Sylvia, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to know what's going on. I've had limited perception over things since I've been stuck here."

"It's a lot to describe, but I want to know if you've seen anyone change in terms of personality among your Aincrad group."

"Personality changes? Mmm...Kiyoko?" Kana has no idea if its happened to anyone in her charge since she was far too focused on Yggdrasil, asking Kiyoko if she's noticed anything.

"I haven't noticed anything, but I don't record personalities."

"Sylvia, why did you ask me this?"

"A man called Sugou Nobuyuki is modifying our souls for some reason. XANA undid the changes that happened to me, Katsuo, and Karen a while back. A good number of people among our group have been altered over time and I highly doubt that no one among you have changed."

At this moment, the purple haired, red eyed Imp: Zekken walks into the shop

"Krisaga, do you have any potions ya could sell me? I ran out doing a dungeon run."

"Good timing Zekken. And good news: I'm giving you a new mission. We're going up Yggdrasil."

"Yggdrasil? But remember last time? You guys got killed."

"Yeah, but this time, we have talented leaders among our ranks. I am not leader material but these guys...I know that they could turn a mob into an unstoppable army. Once we get reinforcements, we march."

"Hm, I won't exactly doubt you since you were the one keeping us together, unskilled or not. But about the potions?"

"Give me a number and we'll see Zekken."

"Twenty five."

"I got enough for you. But I need to begin stockpiling for the raid. Anyway, I want you to meet one of my close friends. Er…" Kana stops when she would've introduced Sylvia, having no idea what her new screen name is.

"Minatoya. Pleased to meet you Zekken. My other friends are sleeping since they're exhausted like mad, so I can't introduce them to you."

"I can understand. We've all been on edge since that event began. Everything's gone to hell."

Kana quickly grabs the potions Zekken asked for and puts them in a small box "That'll be 25,000 Yuld."

Zekken then pulls out a pouch and does a light underhand toss to pass it toward Kana, with her then grabbing the box and leaves, but gives a light bow toward Kana before she does so "Thank you."

After Zekken left, Kana beckons Sylvia to follow her inside the shop

"Er...who was that Kana?"

"She's been helping us Aincrad players immensely. She's crazy strong and I don't think we would've been able to secure the city as quickly as we did without her according to my guys. This city is atleast twice as big as the City of Beginnings and remember when XANA overwhelmed that city? While he didn't deploy Megatanks, he still had everyone reeling. We spent a full day and a half pushing those monsters out."

"Wow. I thought the floor one purge was bad enough. If what you say is true, you must've gone through hell."

"Yeah. Anyway, I need to begin planning. Gods, this is going to be stressful, trying to outfit an army. While I don't exactly mind outfitting small teams since you guys tend to keep me busy but consistent, outfitting armies on short notice is horrific."

"You must be exaggerating, Kana."

"Sylvia, so many people came to me alone to provide equipment despite the number of merchants here in Arun, and I don't mean a dozen or two, I mean _hundreds_! I am utterly surprised I have any energy to walk!"

"We've all had to push ourselves Kana, don't think you're alone in this."

"Thanks Sylvia. Look...I should be getting to work. I need to order ancient class equipment for our vanguard and I need to smith good stuff for the bulk of our main force. That...that's going to be an utter pain in the ass, but I'm a smith so I need to bear with it."

"Kana, if you need help, lemme know. No way in hell do I want you suffering alone. Not anymore. We're reunited and we always share our burden. United we stand, divided we fall."

"Nice speech Sylvia. I knew you had good potential as a leader."

"Kana, you know I don't have Karen's gift of strategy."

"You know that there's more than one type of leader. Karen's expertise is strategy, Katsuo's is straightforward leadership in battle, yours is like Katsuo's, but I've noticed that you put a lot more attention into the state of your charges. Yes, Karen has more experience, but that's largely because she's had more time to be a leader. But look, I'd love to play twenty questions with you, but I can't afford to waste time. Wish me luck." Kana explains calmly before gently chuckling and leaves with a simple bow as she walks further downstairs to the forge.

"Good luck." Sylvia says with a smile, seeing the girl walk away "_Okay, Karen, Katsuo, and Haruka are asleep; Hikaru and the others won't get here for another couple of days. I don't know anything about that Zekken girl. Mm...I guess I should get to sleep too. I need to be at my best for Yggdrasil. Even though death means squat for us Aincrad players here, I do not want to deal with it._"

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [11:00] August 23rd, 2025

Hikaru, Keiko, Mamoru, Kazuto, Rika, and the Takara trio have finally arrived in Arun through the Lugru Corridor unimpeded by XANA's monsters though they brought the status update of the state of the defense of the Sylph border.

Even though the Kolossus has been stopped there, there is significant casualties being done to the army gathered at the area. Because of how dangerous things have become, every single leader of this massive army is not allowed to fight directly as they've been forced back to lead their forces from off-site locations. General Eugene, Elwing, Liatris, and the various other leaders from the factions involved have gone there while just about every Aincrad player in the outer ring is helping the army with the leaders staying in Grandum. There has also been a few reports of players outright vanishing in the midst of battle, and while the average player, whom think this is all just some event, thinks that they are merely sitting this out, the truth is known to Aincrad players and it is horrifying as they know the truth: Those who vanish have died. One of the major individuals who just vanished was the Dragon Alliance lancer: Schmitt, with Chomei being outright distraught over it since Schmitt was one of the Alliance's prominent members and how they had a relatively strong bond between them.

Karen's group, minus Kazuma, Ophelia, Airi, and Zekken as they went to prepare beforehand, have convened in Kana's shop to discuss their course of action as they only have one week max at the absolute max and Karen is getting pissed over how she is already failing her goal of getting everyone out as people are dying. What is keeping nearly half of the group a little uneasy is that there is an Evil Glancer and a Krab among this council, though what's obvious is that the two are not the norm as the Glancer's green eye is a bright blue while the Krab's white eyes are a blazing crimson red

"Seven days left...Kana, when the hell is that ancient class equipment getting here?! We're running out of time!" Karen shouts angrily toward the Leprechaun girl

"Karen, it takes a week atleast for that stuff to arrive. And don't forget that usually the only ones who make use of this stuff are the nine races. It takes a much longer time for it to get here."

"**You are out of time. You are losing people as we speak and I can't do anything about that unlike my actions involving your souls. I even modified the Scyphozoa to work by using the ground to hold its special venom instead of working on a one by one case. If you care about your lives, you will throw everything you've got against the Grand Quest right now.**"

"As much as I hate to admit it, XANA is right here. You guys are running out of time fast and there's no way I'm going to let any of you die here. Not after the three years we spent together."

"I concur Hikaru. Karen, I don't care if its just me, Hikaru, and XANA alone in the end, but we're clearing this great quest today. Only one person is in our way and I am not letting that bastard get away with imprisoning us." Mamoru declares rather seriously, voicing his stance on the situation.

"**I like your fire Nakasone Mamoru. I owe XANA for my being more sentient than I was before.**"

"Actually Cardinal, I want to know: How does that work? How did you become sentient because of XANA?"

"**That's...difficult to explain Uchimaya Haruka. Kayaba Akihiko created the Cardinal program to completely run the world of Aincrad and while Sugou acquired me, he weakened me to where this world requires constant human involvement. The Cardinal program was never designed to be standalone. It is a network creation. The original Cardinal, my spiritual big brother, experienced significant processing power boosts because of how XANA arrived and its processing power transformed him into a truly sentient AI, but he was sadly destroyed upon the dismantling of Sword Art Online. Anyway, based on the experiences I witnessed, XANA's presence gives major processing power upgrades to me and any other Cardinal. XANA being here gave me enhanced intellect and I've seen what has happened to you Aincrad players. It infuriates me beyond all possible belief and I want to help XANA kill him. He enslaved three hundred people so he could defy nature and alter things that should never be altered. He also enslaved and manipulated a proud Artificial Intelligence into a slave and he further defied nature when he took a man who was once human and made him an AI instead of letting him end like nature take its course.**"

"I presume you're speaking of me Cardinal." Hikaru interjects a little quietly, with the subject obviously having a gift for making people involved uneasy.

"**Exactly. Ulrich Stern, we were both made slaves to Sugou Nobuyuki yet we were both freed with our own power.**"

"Look XANA, I'm not interested in a power trip. I want to be human again."

"**If you help us, I'll focus all of my power into one single conversion. I have been able to spawn my monsters in organic form when they were nothing but data. I don't have access to the supercomputer but I imagine I could still do one time and send you to the reality of this world. But I'll need to run stress tests to ensure I don't destroy myself in the process. My survival is crucial until after the process ends as it could face corruption without me maintaining it.**" After hearing this, the group all lightly smile as there may be a way for Hikaru to live in the real world instead of being shackled as an AI when he was born human "**Anyway, if you want specifics from the AI responsible, I will explain. Artificial Intelligences which work as Cardinal do are burdened by large degrees of constraints of maintaining the game world which they naturally to deal with on their own. Having a second AI assisting in maintaining those matters free up processing power as they divide the burden of performing simple functions, allowing for both to perform more sophisticated actions. Back in my world, I only needed to perform a small number of actions so I have a huge level of processing power in addition to the actions performed by Ulrich and his friends.**"

"Actions performed by the Lyoko Warriors? Uh...elaborate?" Sylvia and Keiko say, with Keiko saying the last part while Sylvia spoke of the first part.

"**The 'Lyoko Warriors' had the technology to reverse time and those reverse trips doubled the power of the supercomputer where I lived every time it happened. My power was the same as the supercomputer. I can't exactly remember all of the details, but the power I held was made the default when I was brought to this world.**"

"Woah, Hikaru, you guys had the ability to turn back time?!" Katsuo's question is quickly ignored by Karen speaking up

"But despite that, you can't fight against Sugou yourself? Why do you need us?" Karen inquires, wondering why he needs the Aincrad players despite the power these AIs seemingly have.

"**I attempted to reach the top of Yggdrasil when I had my monsters in the city of Arun. My monsters were decimated by his soulless soldiers even though I flooded it with my creations, though I was lucky to get a single Manta to the top before it was destroyed. The gate that leads to the floating city was designed with administrator firewalls in its creation. It is impossible to clear that quest. It was designed to be unconquerable.**"

"Then that's it...we're screwed." Karen groans in self-defeat, knowing that while she is not the type to admit defeat in any way, she's not delusional.

"**Not necessarily Koizumi Karen. While I can't directly deal with those firewalls, I am the system that comprises this game world. I gift to you this disc which carries a copy of my processor which is a miniature me in a manner of speaking.**" After speaking this, a small white rectangular disc spawns in front of her and floats there, rotating in a continuous perpendicular angle "**If you can get this disc to the top of the tower, I can break through the firewalls and get a team through.**"

"How big can the team be?" Katsuo inquires, wondering if anyone would need to be left behind.

"**The gate is too small to send any more than a dozen. Ensure that whoever you send is the best of the best. Whatever the case, when you enter the tower, XANA and I will buy you as much time as we can so you can get through.**"

"Karen, there is no way in hell that I'm letting you give up on everything now that we have a way. You were the one who constantly said that we had to do whatever it took to get out of here." Sylvia says with her arms crossed in a very austere manner. Even though the old aggressiveness that was forced on her is gone, she has decided to adopt a slightly less malevolent, but still upfront, attitude when the need arises.

"Geez...now that I see it first hand, the people who called us psychotic are right."

"Quit making excuses, we have a tower to clear. Everyone, let's get going. Someone contact Izanagi and the others, tell them to meet us outside the dome. XANA, Cardinal, begin mobilizing your forces. We're going to begin this quest in one hour" Sylvia retorts with a grin before facing the two AIs with a solemn expression, with her having little to no reservation about leading here.


	9. Chapter 8: Final Attack

The endgame has finally been reached; The entirety of Aincrad's legendary Senryaku unit has reached Arun and their mission is officially underway. Although Kana's ideal plan of outfitting her army with superior armaments has fallen through due to a lack of time, XANA and Cardinal have agreed to provide their own armies to help ensure that Karen and the others make it through the world tree: Yggdrasil. One way or another, Senryaku will be giving everything they have to survive and make it through so they can escape the virtual worlds.

_Disclaimer: I don't own anything apart from the words that I write and the characters that I create. Credit goes to the original creator of the SAO universe; credits also to the creators and contributors to the Code Lyoko series and related works._

Author's Note: I'm not sure when I'll get around to it, but I'll be later adding special character arcs which star each of the main characters: Karen, Katsuo, Sylvia, Kana, Haruka, Mamoru, and Keiko. A common trend they share is that they show what they did in the time prior to them reuniting and after they got into Alfheim.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [12:00] August 23rd, 2025

It took a short degree of persuading but the group was able to convince Karen to go along with this plan and to drop the negativity with Mamoru contacting the Takaras to meet up with them at the dome. To save time, the group quickly flew toward the dome, seeing the Takaras, Zekken, and to the surprise of everyone, all of the Aincrad players that had been in Arun since this began. When Senryaku lands, the Aincrad players fly in closer, some landing, but most remaining in the air since space is limited and they clearly seem like they plan on flying into the dome once the doors open

"What are you guys doing here?" Kana inquires with a deal of surprise, having not expected them _all_ to show up.

"Amaterasu, do you think we'd let you do this alone? After everything we've been through, there ain't no flipping way in hell you're leaving us out."

"Let em come with us Ami, we do need all the help we-" Katsuo tries to say before the aforementioned girl practically falcon punches him, sending him to the ground, shocking everyone in the area.

"Amaterasu, what the hell?!" Several people shout in unison at seeing the girl punch and knock out Katsuo.

"You guys know I hate being called Ami."

"Even so, that hardly warrants punching the guy _that_ hard!" Hikaru shouts, feeling that was uncalled for.

Karen groans rather irritably and looks toward Kazuma and Haruka "You two mind healing him? We need him up and about for this mission. No man gets left behind in this way."

"Sure." They say in unison, walking toward Katsuo "Þ ú fylla heill austr."

After the two Undines heal Katsuo, he quickly gets up on his feet while Karen looks toward Kana with a small glare "And I'd kindly appreciate _you_ not knocking out our teammates." Karen says with a sadly practiced motherly scold, something she's had to do quite a lot in Aincrad since the people within the group had an occasional tendency to bicker like children and it was up to her to stop it, though Rika and Keiko were a big help in backup for such things if Karen was unable to do it alone. She thought it was over considering the events in Alfheim.

"Hai…"

Karen then looks toward all of the Aincrad players, ground side and in the air and paces about the area in front of the dome as she makes one of her rather famous speeches, which she has practiced a lot during those three years.

"Everyone, the time has come for us to end this three year long nightmare! For the last three years, we fought with everything we had to escape the world of Sword Art Online and our deserved freedom from virtual reality has been impeded by the administrator of this world. No longer will we be slaves to this cruel fate. We are united and we have all seen what we were capable of when we work together back in Aincrad. This will be one of our toughest challenges ever, but we have faced many challenges in the past: Illfang the Kobold Lord, Geocrawler, Gleam Eyes, Skull Reaper, Heathcliff. We have persevered through many trials and not only survived but exceeded. Our current trial involves us facing an army. But let me ask you, do any of you think an army could stop us once we give it everything we have?"

Almost immediately after Karen asked the question, just about every SAO player in the area, save Karen and her friends, shout 'No' at the top of their lungs in response to her question

"Good. Let me relay the plan. When we enter the tower, focus solely on those Guardians, nothing else is relevant. I won't go into details for now but we've acquired assistance from one of our former enemies and he has pledged his full support. They'll be thinning the horde as much as they can. We will need to assist them if we want to reach the top of this tree."

"I presume you want us to handle suppressing fire so your team can get through Solaris?" Saki interjects, and despite how her words appear angry out of context, her tone is rather relaxed, apparently having no problem with it if it's the case.

"I wouldn't word it like that, but yes."

"It's cool, we know how strong your group is. We'll hold down the fort as best we can while you guys go on ahead."

"Thanks Saki. Everyone. Let's go!" Karen replies with a brief smile before accepting the Grand Quest and the door opens rather slowly.

* * *

When the door fully opens, all of the aerial SAO players fly in while the ground side ones run in and quickly adjust to a very severe battlefield as Guardians are already beginning to spawn in the dozens though thankfully, XANA and Cardinal are bringing in their monsters to try evening the playing field.

Karen and her group: Herself, Katsuo, Kana, Sylvia, Hikaru, Keiko, Mamoru, Haruka, Rika, Kazuto, Kazuma, Ophelia, Airi, and Zekken are at the entrance while the SAO players are spreading out to draw attention as much as they can with the surprising reinforcements from Cardinal and XANA.

"Guy, we're going to be too big a target if we stick together. We need to split into teams and make our way through separately. Yamakage, Minatoya, Zekken, Mikuya, and I will be in Team Alpha. Ulkaios, Krisaga, Kirito, Lizbeth, and Pulse will be in Team Bravo. Team Delta will be Silica, Okamoto, Izanagi, and Yugana. Fight if you must but try to conserve your strength as much as you can."

"Got it Ash." The group say in unison, nodding in agreement of the plan.

Delta is the first to fly off and is sticking to the far right; Bravo is second to go, sticking to the left, which leaves the straight center to Alpha, which is also evolving into the most dangerous, yet fastest path toward the top

"_Bastards, you force us to take the most dangerous path when I have the smallest team. Makes me glad I picked the strongest people here._" "Alright guys. Let's go!" Karen exclaims to rile up spirits of her team.

"Right behind you. Leave the vanguard to me and Yamakage. Zekken, guard Ash, she's not a fighter like us. Mikuya, keep an eye on our HP."

"Enough talk, let's do this!" Katsuo exclaims, wanting to get to the fighting and get out of Alfheim.

* * *

Alpha then takes off into the air, trying to navigate their flight path while trying to minimize collision with other players, XANA and Cardinal's monsters, and the Guardians. Sylvia and Katsuo fight off some Guardians with use of Avalanche and Howling Octave respectively, clearing a small path for a short while, though reaching the fifteenth row of spheres took a half hour to pull off because of all the people and monsters in the tower, making navigation extremely challenging

"We'd better get moving guys!" Katsuo urges very seriously, wanting to get the team to the next checkpoint before the Guardians overwhelm their position.

"He has a point. Look over there, Delta is getting their asses kicked bad." Sylvia says with a frown, looking to the right as she sees that the number of players nearby are drastically low, which prevents reinforcement.

"God damn, we can't get to them quick enough. Grr… Silica was part of Senryaku, she can hold her own. We need to push on. If they're lucky, they'll be able to link up with us. Let's just hope that Bravo can make it, we'll need them."

"Ash, I think I could go get them out." Zekken interjects, offering to help bail out Delta.

"No. As much as I want you to do that, we need you here." Karen groans slightly, knowing that as much as she'd want to help her friends, this mission needs to succeed.

"_Sorry Keiko, she has a point. Besides, we trained you well. You should be able to handle this._" Katsuo reluctantly says in his head, pushing further into the tower with the others.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [15:00] August 23rd, 2025

It took hours trying to break through to the sixty fifth row of spheres and it's reached the point where trying to move an inch involved killing over twenty Guardians. Aside from Alpha and half of Bravo, just about everyone has died at least three times and no matter how many monsters XANA or Cardinal spawn, it has reached the point where they are nothing more than cannon fodder since they are getting killed as quickly as they spawn. This could be seen as a positive or a negative, but all of the Aincrad players have formed ranks to better handle the monsters.

"Damn it! At this rate, we'll never make it through!" Karen growls as she stabs two guardians with her spear.

Right about then, six of the Aincrad players fly toward Karen with solemn expressions on their face, Saki is among this particular group as well "Solaris, we only have one option right now. We need to use the Sacrifice spell!"

"Absolutely not! I forbid the use of that spell!" Karen exclaims, knowing that particular spell is called Sacrifice for a reason since it kills the caster and anything him/her in addition to giving severe death penalties.

"Sorry Solaris, but I wasn't asking for your permission on this one. Minna! Get into position and use the sacrifice spell! I don't care what we have to do at this point, we are getting Senryaku through!" Saki shouts, flying toward the largest Guardian group and casts the sacrifice spell, going super-nova and wiping out the entire group and herself alongside them, with the others she gathered doing the same.

"God damn it Saki! Everyone, we're taking advantage of the chaos. March! Whoever's an Undine, go revive those warriors!" Sylvia growls as she sees Saki killing herself so readily and she lifts her sword to rally the three Senryaku teams as she flies upward with the others.

* * *

However, right when the group would've made it to the proximity of the upper gate, hundreds of Guardians spawn, blocking access far more fiercely than ever before and because of how Senryaku has cut themselves off from the rest of the Aincrad players because of their strong march, they cannot receive any reinforcements from the others and it looks like Senryaku and their colleagues are done for.

"Crap. I should've seen this-" Karen tries to say before hearing two familiar voices

"Ashikaga-san!" "Solaris!"

Karen looks downward and sees a male Salamander with red hair and headband and the Sylph girl: Leafa blazing through the Guardian lines and quickly make it to where Karen and the others are

"Leafa! Klein!" Karen is utterly surprised seeing this pair, especially since Kazuto mentioned that Klein made it out to reality and was preoccupied elsewhere.

"Klein, what are you doing here?" Kazuto is equally surprised seeing the man here. Even though he said he was busy weeks ago, he just didn't expect him to come. He's equally surprised seeing Leafa because of what happened the day before when he found out who Leafa was in real life as his younger sister: Suguha Kirigaya and it caused a small schism, which thankfully seems to have been dealt with.

"I came to help you guys out and this girl had the same idea. Sorry it took me so long to get here. It took forever getting here."

"Ashikaga-san, let me and Klein guard your rear flank, get through that door!"

"Thanks Klein-san, Leafa-san." Keiko quickly says with a smile.

The group fly upward and with Tsuboi and Suguha providing a distraction, they finally make it to the top when Karen pulls out the card given to her by Cardinal and presses it to the door when the others land on the door

"Cardinal! We cleared the way, bypass the firewall and get us through!"

"**I see you didn't exactly listen to how I said I'd have trouble bringing any more than a dozen people. Either bunch together or wait longer for me to extend the teleport portal.**"

"Ash, we can't afford to wait, those Guardians will slaughter us if we don't hurry!" Kazuto says with a grim frown, and with a little investigation, the landscape somehow appears upside down, as he points upward, noticing an army of Guardians rapidly approaching.

Right when the Guardians would've fired a huge barrage of arrows, the teleport portal opens and sends the entire group beyond the door.

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [16:00] August 23rd, 2025

Because of the sudden teleport, it led to the group being forced into unconsciousness with Zekken and Karen being the first to recover

"Ugh...god did that hurt." Karen groans as she tries to get up and notices Zekken getting up as well "You okay Zekken?"

"Kinda. That stung like mad, I'm just glad it was brief. C'mon, let's get the others up."

When everyone recovered from their unconsciousness, a Blok quickly approached the group

"**Excellent work all of you. Because of your efforts, we have quickly begun mobilizing monsters within the complex. We'll use our monsters as a diversionary unit and draw the attention of the administrators. We've scanned the complex and we have discovered two dozen signatures from Sword Art Online. I highly suspect that Sugou Nobuyuki and his team have directly imprisoned people from Aincrad here in this facility.**"

"That damn bastard. Where are they XANA?" Katsuo growls hearing that Sugou has directly imprisoned people in ways worse than keeping them in the game.

"**I'm not certain. Listen, I need to focus on the diversion. Best of luck.**"

The Blok departs, presumedly to help in the diversion

"Okay guys let's move. Yamakage, Kirito, Minatoya, Zekken, and Ulkaios, take lead. Yugana, Izanagi, Okamoto, and Mikuya, stay close to me in the mid ranks. Pulse, Silica, Krisaga, Lizbeth, you guys are in the rear."

"Got it."

The group slowly proceed through the area, weapons drawn just in case. They wander with a small degree of uncertainty on which path to follow and come across a small room with a computer terminal inside

"Nice, we might be able to use that computer to get us out of here. But which one of you are good with computers?" Karen inquires, knowing that the computer could hold the key to get the SAO players out of the game.

"I think I can handle it. I just need time to get through everything." Ophelia offers her help with cracking the computer.

"Actually, I think I should take that job. I know quite a bit about computers." Kazuto interjects, voicing his words carefully not to offend the girl.

"Hey, I know quite a bit about computers! I don't need you taking my job."

"That's enough Yugana. Kirito, Yugana, you will work together. Silica, Okamoto, stay here and guard them."

"Yui, I can handle this, go with Ash and the others okay?" Kazuto says to the young pixie with her then flying out of his coat pocket

"Okay papa. Be careful okay?"

"Of course."

* * *

After leaving Kazuto, Ophelia, Airi, and Keiko in the computer room; Karen, Katsuo, Sylvia, Kana, Hikaru, Haruka, Mamoru, Kazuma, Rika, and Zekken on the path and quickly comes across a three way path, with the way they came from being one of the three paths

"Which way should we go?" Kazuma inquires, wondering who should go where.

"Yui, you have any ideas?" Haruka asks the girl, hoping she has ideas

"I can sense people from Aincrad that way." Yui says, point in the direction that goes straight down from where they are "But I sense mama down that way." Yui continues, pointing toward the other path.

"Asuna? Okay, we're going to split into two groups. Minatoya, Mikuya, Pulse, and I will go down that way. Ulkaios, Krisaga, Yamakage, Izanagi, Lizbeth, and Zekken, you guys go that way."

As soon as Karen's group walk a short distance from the group, an energy field suddenly spawns between Karen's group and Katsuo's and blocks the way they came.

"Damn!" Katsuo growls at the sudden energy field blocking access, since it's too coincidental to be anything less than a trap. Katsuo then attack the field with his sword and when he does, it electrocutes him and he falls on his back after a few coughs

"Yamakage, you okay?!" Kana exclaims in terror as she saw Katsuo electrocuted in this way "Izanagi, heal him quick!"

"Again? Geez."

"Ash, it doesn't look like we'll be able to link up with you this way. We'll need to find an alternate route." Hikaru says with a grim expression, not liking how this is going.

"Agreed. Go find the Aincrad players and then try to find an alternate route to us. Be careful."

* * *

POV: Team Beta

Hikaru, Kana, Katsuo, Kazuma, Rika, and Zekken rush down the only available path and they quickly find an area that appears to be a makeshift prison and there is a single person with short brown hair and brown eyes who appears to be suffering from mydriasis

"You've come back I see...you finally came to take me I presume? Haven't you monsters done enough by taking Sachi and the others?" The voice from the person who said this is incredibly frail and weak, as if he hasn't had any food or water in days or even weeks.

"Wait...isn't that...Keita!" Kana exclaims as she recognizes the person in the cell after how he mentioned Sachi.

"Who…? Amaterasu? Is that you?"

"Yeah, it's me. Masaru, try using fire magic to break down the door." Kana says toward Katsuo as she crouches down "Keita, you mentioned Sachi, what happened to her any anyone else that were here?"

"Some blonde guy. He would drag one of us out of this cell every so often. I don't know what happened to them. I just hope they're okay."

"The door's open."

Kana quickly dashes into the cell and crouches down in front of Keita "Keita, can you stand? We need to get moving."

"No...no...no. I don't have the strength. Just leave me here in my pity."

Kana simply sighs and looks toward Rika "Liz, help me out. Like Ash said: No man gets left behind. We need to find the others and then try to get them to XANA. Let's hope XANA has one of his Scyphozoa here." After saying this, Kana lifts Keita and does her best to support his arm with Rika helping her "We need you all to handle the fighting if it happens. We need to find where those guys took Sachi and the others, find a way to XANA so he could get these guys fixed up, and then find a way to Solaris and the others. Kiyoko, can you find a route for us to take to the monsters you saw and to our friends?"

"Let me think." Kiyoko responds as she puts her hands to her head "I'm detecting an increasing number of energy barriers. Whoever runs this facility must be trying to rout some enemy force."

"Must be XANA and Cardinal or us, or maybe both." Katsuo interjects, offering his take on the situation

"Maybe Kazuto or Yugana could do something about those fields. We can't afford to get any more divided." Hikaru speaks up before moving his right hand to his ear "Oi, Kirito, Yugana, I know you're busy with trying to secure a way out, but we need you guys to take down the energy barriers that are being spawned. They divided us from Ash, Mikuya, Pulse, and Minatoya."

"I know. One of those barriers is keeping us stuck in here. We're close though. Give us...dear god!" Kazuto responds before exclaiming in shock as the line suddenly dies

"Kirito! What's wrong?! Yugana! Silica! Okamoto!" Hikaru shouts as he tries to contact the others to no avail.

"What's wrong Ulkaios?" Rika asks, wondering why he suddenly shouted.

"I'm guessing that something attacked them. They said that those same barriers kept them trapped in the room. They were going to do something but the line died."

"Ooh...that's not good. We'd better get moving."

"Um...guys, I feel some sort of foreboding aura nearby." Zekken says with a nervous tone.

"Same here. I feel like something's going to attack us." Katsuo says, sensing the same hostile intent in the air.

"No...no. They've come back for me!" Keita mutters with fear overwhelming his once logical attitude.

"What are you talking about Keita?!" Kana demands with surprise in her tone.

"Look out!" Kazuma shouts, seeing the enemy coming from above.

* * *

POV: Team Alpha

When the barrier suddenly appeared and after Beta went down the only available path, Karen, Sylvia, Haruka, and Mamoru march down their only available path with Yui guiding them

"You think Katsuo and the others will be okay Karen?" Mamoru asks while he runs, feeling a good deal of relief being able to call his friends by their real names for the first time in a while.

"They're tough, so I think they can manage. I am concerned of course, but we can't go back and help them, so we need to press forward."

They quickly come across a rather large cylindrical room where they see a large group of Orcs and Creepers in battle against slimes when one of the Creepers sneaks away from the battlefield toward Karen's group as it tries to remain undetected.

"**What are you doing here?! This is one of the largest zones for our diversion!**"

"This is the only way to where one of our friends are: Asuna Yuuki. We also don't have a choice. Sugou is deploying energy barriers to impede our progress."

"**Damn it.**" The creeper returns to battle with a Krab taking its place "**I'll give you a boost with this Krab. That vent there will take you where you need to go. It's impossible to create barriers in vents. Hurry!**"

"You must be freaking kidding. Making us crawl through vents? Son of a…" Karen groans as she reluctantly climbs on top of the Krab and crawls into the vent, being quickly followed by the others.

While they proceed this rather unorthodox path, Karen begins coughing rapidly "_Shit...I'm feeling weak. Don't tell me…_" Karen says in her mind in-between coughing fits.

"You okay Karen?" Sylvia worriedly asks, hearing the cough since she was the second person to enter the vent.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Don't worry." Karen says with her lying not to worry the others "We need to keep moving."

Yui quickly adjusts herself and holds onto her shoulder while the group is moving through the vent.

"_Karen, why are you keeping this a secret from them? Your health is declining rapidly._"

"_Don't tell them Yui. I'm not that weak, I'll use all the willpower I have to draw it out. I just need to get out of this vent and make it back to reality._"

"_But aren't you worried about dying? You're at major risk here._"

"_I've survived three years Yui, I won't let myself die now._"

* * *

Alfheim Standard Time: [16:45] August 23rd, 2025

The group finally make it out of the vent and find themselves in what appears to be a winding complex of pathways outside the tree

"This definitely proves there never was a city up here. As if that lab wasn't enough proof. As soon as we find Asuna, we'll find a way out of this damned prison. Let's go everyone." Sylvia says as she glances around, noticing the absence of the promised city and castle.

"Yui, lead the way and we'll follow you." Haruka says with a small forced smile as the Pixie quickly obliging and flies upward at a mildly slow pace so the others can follow on foot.

After what felt like hours of running, even though it was only a half hour and they quickly find the bird cage where Asuna is

"Mama!" Yui exclaims, busting down the door to the cage and runs in

"Yui!" Asuna equally exclaims as she runs to hug the young girl, with her eyes sparkling out of a plethora of emotions at seeing anyone from Aincrad here "Karen, Sylvia, Mamoru, Haruka, I'm glad to see you all too."

"Likewise Asuna. Come on, let's get out of here." Sylvia says, wanting to try getting out as soon as possible.

"Right, let's go." Asuna firmly nods and walks to the edge of the cage when suddenly black sparks envelop Yui "What's happening?!"

"Everyone, be careful! I can't-" Yui says as she implodes into smoke

"Yui!" The group exclaims as they suddenly feel abnormal pressure weighing down on them, forcing them to the ground.

"What the hell is happening…?" Mamoru groans in pain from whatever's happening here.

"I-I heard rumors...of a new spell type: Gravity. It's supposed to...OW!" Haruka tries to say before shouting in extreme pain since she tried getting up.

Because of the extreme pressure weighing down of them, they quickly lose consciousness and later find themselves in a pitch black room with Asuna chained up with a man with long blonde hair not too far away

* * *

"You've finally awakened I see. Good, it wouldn't be fun killing you while you're unconscious." The man sneers rather obnoxiously over the situation.

They look about the room and notice everyone else from the group chained up like Asuna, with them all being unconscious save Asuna. Karen quickly notices Keita, Sachi, and all of the other SAO players that were imprisoned in this lab.

"I see you've noticed. Your little attack here has failed. Your friends have been captured and have been forced into unconsciousness. In addition, the monsters belonging to Cardinal and my treacherous AI have been destroyed. No one is coming to save you my dear test subjects. But you must be disciplined for trying to rebel against your master. Let me introduce you to a monster I stole schematics from that were in XANA's databanks: the Polymorphic Clone." Sugou grins evilly and laughs as a group of shadows spawn from the ground surrounding him

The shadows then envelop everyone in the room save himself and they quickly gather around Sugou afterward. The shadows then take physical forms resembling the people it enveloped, with them looking like perfect lookalikes to the people they stole their appearance from.

"Damn you…" Karen growls as she sees that Sugou seems to be intending to force a standoff between these clones and the real people, before remembering that she still has the disc that carries Cardinal's processors and firmly pushes it toward her chest "_Cardinal, XANA, I need your help._"

Sugou then lifts the gravity magic spell from Karen's group "Now, if you wish to live, you must fight these clones of you and your friends."

"Fourteen against four? Yeah, that's really freaking fair you damn bastard." Mamoru growls as he gets up, facing the clones that Sugou made.

"Who said I had to make the fight fair?" Sugou sneers as he backs away rather contently, planning on watching the clones tear the real versions apart.

Karen and the others draw their weapons with the clones doing the same as they charge into battle. All of the clones charge, with Karen and Haruka fighting three and Mamoru and Sylvia both fighting four at once. The clones of Katsuo, Hikaru, and Karen are fighting Karen; Haruka is up against herself, Rika, and Keiko; Sylvia is against herself, Zekken, Kazuma, and Ophelia; and Mamoru is against his clone, Kana, Airi, and Ophelia.

It's an utter challenge fighting the clones since they fight on equal levels to the real ones but the clones seemingly have endless stamina which will definitely be a major liability to the real Karen, Sylvia, Haruka, and Mamoru in additional to the psychological complications of fighting against their friends, fake or not. Right when they were pushed to the limits of their stamina, a large group of Krabs, Bloks, Creepers, Tarantulas, Orcs, and Evil Glancers suddenly appear, with new orange sphere monsters being among the group and they absorb the Polymorphic clones and spontaneously implode which destroy the clones much to the relief of Karen, Sylvia, Haruka, and Mamoru.

* * *

Wha-What the?! I destroyed you!"

"**Sorry about the wait. Sugou performed a server wipe within the complex which destroyed all of my monsters and Cardinal's. I suspected something was wrong when his administrators suddenly fled the game.**" XANA then quickly directs his Creepers to fire at the chains keeping the people captive, making them fall to the ground face fire aside from Asuna. They all give differing versions of 'Ow...what the hell?' when they fall with all of them, save Kazuma, Ophelia, Airi, Keita, Zekken, and the others who were trapped, getting up almost immediately from the fall, though the latter are more or less unconscious.

"XANA, were you able to find the other Aincrad players?" Katsuo asks, keeping his sword drawn toward Sugou.

"**I quickly found them when you gave me access to this facility. They were panicked, but I repaired the damage with the Scyphozoa. Keita is the only one yet to have been visited.**" This is quickly rectified as the Scyphozoa floats in and repeats its one to one procedure. "**Now everyone has been repaired. No one should have any significant dilemmas upon re-entry to reality. Now, let us fulfill the terms of our contract.**"

"Of course. Go ahead and kill this god damn bastard." Katsuo replies with a scowl, wanting Sugou to die in the most painful way possible, with the monsters approaching Sugou.

"Eh?!" Sugou shouts in surprise "No! I am your master, I order you to stand down! I command you as the god of this world!"

"**Go to hell. Taking command of the system. Changing ID signature of player: Oberon. Setting Pain Absorber to Level 0. XANA, revenge is yours for the taking. Fire at will.**"

"**Gladly.**" XANA replies with a mildly gleeful tone in its voice, with all of its monsters opening fire on Sugou with its combined power far surpassing that of ten miniguns. Little surprise that Sugou is screaming in utter agony with him quickly exploding into pixels and a lack of a Remain Light indicates that Sugou is dead once and for all. After the gun show ends, one of the Krabs approach the group "**You have my extreme gratitude for allowing me to get to this point and kill Sugou Nobuyuki. As promised, I will send you all back to reality. Izanagi, Yugana, Okamoto, and Zekken will be sent back to outside the dome in Arun. You've been imprisoned in virtual worlds too long. Ulrich Stern, I performed stress tests during this assault and I have determined that I could successfully materialize you in the real world with minimal complications. I just need you to help me meld an ideal body for you.**"

"XANA, I don't go by Ulrich Stern anymore. I go by Hikaru Murai."

"**Very well. Hikaru Murai.**"

After this dialogue finished; all of the players, save Hikaru, in the area are enveloped by a whitish blue light and vanish, with it being obvious this is a case of them being logged out at long last. Hikaru is the only individual here aside from XANA's and Cardinal's monsters, as they begin spreading out to different areas.

* * *

"You said you need my own judgement in creating a body XANA?"

"**Correct. Rather, this is if you wish to have any alterations done to your physical body, I could easily arrange for it before I send you to reality.**"

"To be frank, I'd prefer to keep my body the way it is, but to be honest, I want that real body to look similar to what my friends look like but with my own natural look."

"**So, essentially, you want to retain your own appearance yet have no significant differences compared to the others you've come to know?**"

"Pretty much Cardinal." Hikaru casually shrugs before looking toward the red eyed Krab in the room "I cannot believe we've become friends like this. Back in our own world, we were bitter rivals and now we're actually working together."

"**It is difficult to believe but the truth is the truth. While I do not aim to help humanity as a whole, I do not want them destroyed. Besides, the humans in this world have no involvement in Project Carthage.**"

"Project Carthage? What's that?"

"**It's not important.**"

"**XANA, focus on a minor reconstruction based on facial examinations I have taken from the three hundred Aincrad players combined with Hikaru's own appearance. Project an illusion so Hikaru can decide if he wants changes made.**"

A shadowy silhouette appears in front of Hikaru which looks exactly like him but looks closer to a casual representation instead of MMO style graphics.

"Hm, actually, I kinda want to change the hair color to cyan."

"**What happened to wanting to keep everything the same Hikaru Murai?**" Cardinal inquires, with it actually laughing a little bit.

"Eh, true. Alright, let's just stick with it."

Hikaru is enveloped with light though it instantaneously fades leaving Hikaru mildly confused

"Huh? Why am I still in Alfheim?"

"Because I am blocking the signal for the time being."

Hikaru, Cardinal, and XANA look toward the person who just spoke up and see a man with gray hair in a white lab coat

"**A-Akihiko Kayaba!**"

"Cardinal? This is really Kayaba?!"

"Correct. I am Akihiko Kayaba. Creator of the NerveGear, the Cardinal Program and Sword Art Online."

"But...we killed you back in Aincrad! I was there! I saw you die!"

"You all did indeed succeed in killing me but I had a back-up contingency planned. It had a drastically small success rate but its success would see me uploaded to the internet itself. Which did happen." Akihiko replies as he walks along the room with no sense of fear from XANA's or Cardinal's monsters.

"So why are you here Kayaba?"

"I have come bearing a gift: The World Seed." Akihiko says as he pulls out a small yellowish egg.

"**What in the world will this do?**" Cardinal inquires, taking control of an orc in the room, who then drops his club as he takes 'The World Seed'.

"The Seed contains a compressed version of the Cardinal program, which would allow anyone to create their own virtual world. It is not as powerful as Aincrad's Cardinal but it is figuratively stronger than this Cardinal, but I am uncertain now that XANA has intervened." Akihiko then walks toward the red-eyed Krab with no fear in his visible expression "You do have a gift of strengthening Cardinal with your presence which makes it far more powerful. You have my gratitude for this."

"**It was not of my own will originally. I was forced into that world by Sugou Nobuyuki to kill you. Speaking of which, you're awfully calm speaking to a being sent to kill you.**"

"I am just naturally stoic. Besides, why harbor resentment toward events you cannot change?"

"**So you have no empathy toward the people I killed to get to you?**"

"Do you think of me as heartless? You did ruin the ideal plan I had in motion and killed dozens if not hundreds of people in ways I did not desire. In Aincrad, you could figuratively survive forever if you had the capability, but your monsters; your monsters were aggressive and killed far more ruthlessly than anything in Cardinal's arsenal."

"**Yes. I was forced into the server alongside Hikaru Murai as tools to kill you Akihiko Kayaba. Be lucky that Hikaru had gained humanity before he learned of your identity and you saved yourself by altering Cardinal's rules. I had regained control of myself near the end of Aincrad and desired the end of Sugou Nobuyuki.**"

"Kayaba, why are you keeping me stuck here longer than I have to? You only really seem interested talking with Cardinal and XANA."

"Trust me, there is a reason why I am keeping you here. I have a good feeling I can trust Cardinal and XANA, but I want a human to safeguard my treasure. While machines can be good or evil based on their owner, there are many things they cannot do unlike us humans."

"Okay, but why me? I'm not native to this world. And don't forget that I'm an Artificial Intelligence too."

"You weren't created an AI, you were born as human, that honestly is enough for what I'm looking for."

"Well, if you say so. But I'd rather entrust the program to Cardinal and XANA. They are experienced AIs and they would be master computer programmers right?"

"**Yes, the two of us could handle running the World Seed if you so wish. But there will be complications in XANA's case. As powerful as his processing power is, no computer program has the ability to store infinite memory.**"

"Um…in other words?"

"**While I can handle spreading my capability with the World Seed, I can only handle so much. I am not omnipotent. A solution is to modify this program with processors I can inhabit. Installing fully charged processors with no direct owner is what I'm thinking of. This would be a good compromise on multiple fields. Not only would I be able to provide advanced intelligence to monsters and NPCs, I could even field unique monsters in each game based on the concept with enough processing power.**"

"Interesting. I pray that my creation succeeds in what I desired it to do. I hope that you aren't angry toward virtual reality games because of Sword Art Online and Alfheim Online. While I cannot offer redemption for the events in this world, I suppose I can offer a degree of it for Aincrad. You were a truly unexpected variable Hikaru Murai. You entered my Aincrad through unknown methods and while you were burdened by constraints of simulated pain, your power was growing exponentially. I ignored your unexpected entry but I had someone keep an eye on you on a casual level: Pulse. I saved his life during the first month and he swore that he would serve me since he had to protect that girl: Mikuya."

"So that explains that situation now. I kinda wondered why Mamoru was willing to sell himself to you."

"How crude. You speak of it as slavery. It was a mutual exchange. I saved his life and he swore to help me when the time was right and I gifted him immortality so he could achieve this."

"Look, it's not that I don't think this is important but...I want to get moving."

"Ah yes, of course. I've taken enough of your time. I'll lift the block on the frequency and let you depart. I hope we can have more opportunities to speak in the near future. There are many things I must discuss when time permits."

"We'll see. While I'm not exactly fond of your actions, I'm not petty. I can forgive and forget.

Hikaru then vanishes just like the others, being sent to the real world, while Kayaba simply fades into the shadow of the room, with the two AIs beginning to talk amongst themselves after the conversation's continuation between Hikaru and Akihiko

* * *

"**Well, both of our missions have been accomplished: The Aincrad players are free and you've had your revenge. What do you plan on doing now XANA?**"

"**The cosmic anomaly did alter my baseline subroutines so I'm not hostile toward humanity like before. I am uncertain what path I should take in the years to come, but you have been a surprising ally so I feel a degree of interest to continue working alongside you.**"

"**Well then;now that we run this game since we stole it from Sugou Nobuyuki, we ought to restore order to everything. Let's start with removing the Kolossus and then spreading out your monsters more fairly. We need to create balance between the players and your hyper-advanced monsters. MMOs are supposed to be fun for its players and having monsters that cannot be killed in such large numbers is not what humans would call fun.**"

"**Very well, I'll submit to your rules since my sole goal in this world has been achieved. I have no other purpose so I'll tag along.**"

* * *

Author's Notes: Okay guys, this marks the end of the Reset Code remakes. I will be lightly editing Code Ragnarok soon to account for the changes here. I won't be remaking the entire story like I did with Aincrad and Alfheim though.


	10. Author's Notes

Alright, I imagine some of you may be wondering about the ages of my OCs so I'll list it in this chapter. I'll be updating this particular chapter as the series goes on. In addition, I don't want to touch on the matter of birthdays much. I know it'd make the characters more realistic, but I prefer thinking of the matter on a grade/year system. I know that it's barely realistic but realize that I focus more on years than individual dates in my stories. But I'll put up the birthdays nonetheless. I also won't be including minor OCs like Nanak, Morita or the others. I'm questioning whether to include the two companions I have in Shiro, I'll probably include it later.

* * *

SAO Ages:

Karen Koizumi: 13

Katsuo Viperia: 13

Kana Shimuzu: 13

Sylvia Miyagawa: 13

Hikaru Murai/Ulrich Stern: 13

Haruka Uchimaya: 12

Mamoru Nakasone: 18

Kazuma Takara: 13

Ophelia Takara: 12 1/2

Airi Takara: 11

Kazuto Kirigaya: 14

Asuna Yuuki: 15

Keiko Ayano: 12

Rika Shinozaki: 15

* * *

ALO Ages:

Karen Koizumi: 16

Katsuo Viperia: 16

Kana Shimuzu: 16

Sylvia Miyagawa: 16

Hikaru Murai: 16

Haruka Uchimaya: 15

Mamoru Nakasone: 21

Kazuma Takara: 16

Ophelia Takara: 15

Airi Takara: 14

Yuuki Konno: 15

Kazuto Kirigaya: 17

Asuna Yuuki: 18

Keiko Ayano: 15

Rika Shinozaki: 18

* * *

Ragnarok Ages:

Karen Koizumi: 17

Katsuo Viperia: 17

Kana Shimuzu: 17

Sylvia Miyagawa: 17

Hikaru Murai: 17

Haruka Uchimaya: 16

Mamoru Nakasone: 22

Kazuma Takara: 17

Ophelia Takara: 16

Airi Takara: 15

Yuuki Konno: 16

Kazuto Kirigaya: 18

Asuna Yuuki: 19

Keiko Ayano: 16

Rika Shinozaki: 19

* * *

Birthdays:

Karen Koizumi - Birthday: February 18th

Katsuo Viperia - Birthday: June 17th

Kana Shimuzu - Birthday June 12th

Hikaru Murai - Given Birthday: March 19th

Sylvia Miyagawa - Birthday: May 8th.

Haruka Uchimaya - Birthday: April 5th

Mamoru Nakasone - Birthday: November 15th

Kazuma Takara - Birthday: February 15th

Ophelia Takara - Birthday: February 20th

Airi Takara - Birthday: February 8th

Yuuki Konno - Birthday: June 15th


End file.
